C:\Users\John\Downloads\J\Jeffrey Lord - Blade 12 - King of Zunga.pdb

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Jeffrey Lord - Blade 12 - King

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Blade 12: King of Zunga by Jeffrey Lord
CHAPTER ONE
"Blast," said J,. and dropped the sheaf of papers down on the desk in front of
him. It took an effort for him not to throw them, down, or even throw them
across the room.
From behind the broad, polished desk, Lord Leighton stared at J. The scientist
was bent forward in the pose that made his hunchback and his polio-twisted
frame most comfortable for him. His gnarled, knob-jointed hands were splayed
out on the varnished desk top. It seemed to J that for a moment there was a
fleeting look of sympathy on Lord Leighton's gnomelike face. But it vanished
quickly, and was replaced by the man's usual professional detachment.
The scientist shrugged his humped shoulders and said quietly, "It's not my
fault, old chap. Really it isn't."
J sighed: "I know, damn it!" His dignified civil servant's face broke into a
wry grin. "I suppose the one we could blame is Richard himself, if we wanted
to." That made even Lord Leighton smile, at the incongruity of the idea.
J leaned back in his chair and considered. Here in this office two hundred
feet below the Tower of
London sat two of the key men in Project Dimension X, the most important and
most secret research project in England. Sometimes J wondered if they needed
all the secrecy. Would the average man or even the average member of
Parliament really believe in the project if he heard of it, let alone
understand it? J wondered. He was a well-educated man and had been in secret
intelligence work since World War
I. He had often dealt in his work with things too fantastic to believe. But
never with anything like Project
Dimension X. Every so often, when his mind confronted some new part of the
project, it more or less tried to go on strike. What would the man in the
street say?
Project Dimension X involved, very simply, putting a man into alternate
dimensions. Eleven different ones so far, but the number was doubtless nearly
infinite. With Lord Leighton's computer linked to the man's brain, he would
vanish from beneath the Tower-from Home Dimension. He would awaken-somewhere
else-in Dimension X, always naked, usually with a splitting headache; and more
often than not with a great need to both think and act fast to stay alive. The
dimensions varied widely, and most of them sounded like a madman's ravings
when put down on paper. But they all seemed to have one thing in common-they
were all filled with deadly dangers.
The project revolved around four key men. Lord Leighton had developed the
computer-a monster two or three generations beyond anything else believed
possible in the rest of the world. The Prime Minister provided the money that
the project gobbled up by the hundreds of thousands of pounds, and fought off
indiscreet questions from curious M.P.s. J acted as liaison and field man for
both the scientist and the politician, since he had more freedom of movement
than either. And as head of the secret intelligence agency MI6, he had
provided the fourth key man.

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Richard Blade. Recruited by MI6 while still at Oxford, he had fulfilled his
early promise ten times over.
He had been MI6's best agent for the better part of twenty years, expert in
both the thinking and the rough-and-tumble ends of the business. He had been
the secret of many of the agency's most successful operations. He had, in
fact, become virtually indispensable. J would have esteemed him highly even if

Richard had not been so much like the son he had wanted.
But those same exceptional qualities of mind and body that had made Richard
Blade a superlative field agent had also made him the perfect man to travel
into Dimension X. Or perhaps not perfect, but so far the only man in the Free
World able to travel into Dimension X and return alive and sane. He was able
to explore those Dimensions and bring back their science and technology to aid
England. And more often than not, he managed to help the people in each
Dimension cope with problems of their own. Richard was a natural leader. Set
him down in the middle of a wilderness full of howling savages, and in a few
months his wits and his muscles would have enabled him to rise to power. That
had happened more than once out in Dimension X.
But Richard was not superhuman, and he was not invulnerable. There was always
the risk of the pitcher going to the well once too often. Apart from the
personal feelings he had for Blade, J knew that the whole Dimension X program
would come to a standstill if Richard were ever killed, disabled, or lost.
One other Englishman had made the trip into Dimension X, and even returned
alive. But he now sat in a padded cell in an obscure corner of the North
Counties, insane for life. Even without being killed, Blade might come to
that. Not even Lord Leighton could do more than guess what the repeated jolts
to Blade's brain from the computer might do in the way of permanent effects.
Blade had already suffered problems with drinking and sex as a result of brain
trauma. One of J's outstanding and continuing nightmares was that Blade would
one day come back from Dimension X with that athlete's body of his intact. But
there would be only the ruins of a mind behind those piercing blue eyes. J
shuddered at the thought, hardened as he was to seeing his agents take risks.
So there was a search on for other candidates for Dimension X trips. The Prime
Minister was searching
England's pool of likely candidates, while J busied himself checking with the
Americans. The search had been underway now for the better part of two years,
both men doing their best. And that frustrating sheaf of papers that J had
dropped on Leighton's desk was the only result.
J looked at Lord Leighton, half hoping that the scientist would say something
to offer a way out of this dead end. "Do the graphs mean what I think they
do?"
Leighton nodded. "We took Blade's qualities and set up a series of indicators.
A hundred of them, each with a scale of zero to one. Then we graded all of the
other possible candidates that you and the Prime
Minister together had presented, using the same indicators. You've seen the
results."
J sighed wearily. "I know. Blade works out to 92.7 out of a possible 100. The
next highest, an American
Special Forces man assigned to the CIA, works out to 64.3."
"And the doctors and psychiatrists have interpreted that to mean that he has
virtually no chance of making a trip into Dimension X and coming back alive
and sane," said Leighton. "We did a rough application of these indicators to
that poor fellow who did come back insane, and he worked out to
77.1. The guess right now is that nobody with much below an 85 is even worth
trying out. It would be sheer murder to send them through the computer."
J felt like using the kind of language he hadn't used in forty years. He had
to take several deep breaths until the urge passed. Then he asked, "Are you
sure that we've got a comparable amount of information on all the other men?
After all, Richard's been examined more thoroughly than any other ten men in

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the world today, and by the best doctors and psychiatrists."
"I thought of that," replied Leighton. "But it doesn't matter. The difference
between Blade and the others is too big for any lack of information to account
for it. No, we just have to face the fact that Blade is the

most nearly perfect human being known today."
"Perhaps you should tell him that someday."
Lord Leighton's white eyebrows went up. "How do you think he'd take it?"
J fixed the scientist with a cold stare. "Having known Richard for longer than
you have, I would say he'd take it-like a gentleman."
While Leighton and J sat and argued in the office far underground, the "most
nearly perfect human being"
was sitting in a taxi on his way to theTowerofLondon. He was cold, because the
early autumn evening was unseasonably chilly. And he was impatient, because a
properLondonfog was moving in on the city and the poor visibility had slowed
the taxi to a crawl. If the driver couldn't speed things up a bit, Blade was
half inclined to get out and walk the rest of the way to the Tower.
He was tanned and in better condition than usual, if that were possible. This
was the result of a month spent diving for Greek vases off Smyrna, varied with
nights ashore in Turkish bars, sipping good raki and watching the belly
dancers. And before that there had been a month at his Cornish cottage. That
month had been just as pleasant but not quite as relaxing. A lovely and
charming young German exchange student had kept him agreeably busy for a good
part of that month. Two pleasant months, and now it was time to earn his next
spell of leave.
He wondered where he would end up this time. The variety had already been so
incredible that he wondered if Dimension X had anything left that could really
surprise him. Of course landing in a polar ocean, or in the crater of an
active volcano would be surprising. Very surprising. But he wouldn't live long
enough in either case to appreciate the surprise. Or he might land in a
dimension with no human inhabitants. That hadn't happened yet either. But that
would not be terribly interesting. In fact his main survival problem in that
case would be not dying of boredom before the computer brought him home.
He shrugged. He was trying to predict the unpredictable and measure the
infinite. He would be dead or retired long before Dimension X ran out of
surprises. In fact a thousand men could make regular trips into
Dimension X for a century without exhausting its possibilities, or so Lord
Leighton said. And that was something Blade rather liked. He knew he liked to
be always on the move in search of something new.
So here he was, involved in a project that handed him on a silver platter as
much adventure and as much novelty as any human being could very well cope
with. He was content. Not complacent or self-satisfied, but content. He knew
he had out of life nearly everything he could reasonably ask.
The traffic began to break up just before Blade was going to climb out and
walk, so he eventually climbed out of the taxi at theTowerofLondonas he had
intended. He gave the driver an extra tip for fighting his way through the
traffic and poor visibility and watched the taxi's lights shrink away and wink
out in the fog. It was rolling in thicker and thicker now. Blade was frankly
glad that he wasn't going to have to face a trip back in it tonight.
The Special Branch men assigned to the project handed him on with even more
dour faces than usual.
The fog and darkness seemed to be weighing heavily on them. Blade was glad
when the door of the elevator closed, shutting out the dank chill of the
evening and the silent watchdogs.
The elevator dropped the two hundred feet to the level of the computer complex
in the usual few seconds, and the heavy bronze door slid open as noiselessly
as ever. J was standing in the corridor to greet him. The old man's face lit
up as Blade stepped forward, and they shook hands.

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"You're looking remarkably fit, Richard."
Blade briefly told of his last months' doings as they walked down the brightly
lit corridor toward the computer room. At each door there was a slight delay
as they stood still, to be scanned by electronic sentries that had their
characteristics memorized down almost to the fingernail. Each time, the image
they presented matched the sentry's memories of people permitted to come this
way. Each time the door ahead swished open.
"Where's Lord Leighton?" asked Blade.
"Already down with the computer. You know how he is about that blasted
machine. Always fussing over it like a cat with one kitten. He hardly lets the
technicians even dust the consoles."
Blade grinned. "Frankly, I don't mind that if it helps get me into Dimension X
and back safely." J
nodded. That was an unanswerable argument.
Lord Leighton's sanctum lay deep inside the computer facilities, beyond
several rooms filled with the auxiliary equipment needed for the project and
the technicians and operators needed for that equipment.
More and more incomprehensible pieces of electronic wizardry seemed to have
been installed each time
Blade passed through the rooms. Lord Leighton's fertile mind had generated all
sorts of new ideas for increasing the computer's powers. Each of those ideas
had in turn generated its own family of new gadgets. Blade wondered what was
going to happen when there was no more room in the existing net of underground
rooms. Excavate some more? How the Prime Minister would love getting the bill
for that!
Then they stepped through the door into the main computer room. All around and
above them the massive computer consoles loomed. Their gray crackled finish
seemed to absorb light and make the cramped room even gloomier than it would
have been otherwise. In the middle sat the glass-walled booth and on the
rubber floor of the booth stood the chair where Blade would be sitting in a
few minutes. He had never liked the look of that chair. With the booth, it
looked more like a place for executing criminals than for carrying out major
scientific experiments.
Lord Leighton was at the main control board when they entered, too engrossed
in examining the dials and readouts to do more than give a brisk nod to Blade.
A glance at the board told Blade that the main sequence was already underway.
He had been around Lord Leighton's computers long enough to pick up some vague
glimmerings of how they worked.
It was time to get ready. He went into the tiny dressing room and took off his
clothes. The loincloth and the pot of black grease to prevent electrical burns
were laid out waiting for him. When he was naked, he dipped both hands into
the grease and smeared it over every inch of skin, from hairline to toenails.
It neither smelled nor felt any better than usual. Admittedly he couldn't
expect it to be perfumed, but did it have to smell like a cheap insecticide?
Fortunately the grease never stayed on his body through a the transition into
Dimension X. Unfortunately, neither did the loincloth. One of these days he
was going to land in a public place, among a people who frowned on nudity, and
spend his first few days in the new dimension in the local jail on a charge of
indecent exposure.
Blade strode into the room and sat down in the chair. The seat and back of the
chair were chilly against his bare skin. Lord Leighton abandoned the control
panel to its own devices for a moment and came over to wire Blade into the
computer, briskly attaching the forty-odd electrodes and their connecting
wires. The electrodes had the form of polished metal cobra's heads. Blade
looked as though he were being attacked by a monstrous swarm of tiny snakes.

Finally Leighton was finished and stepped back to the controls. J had already
perched himself on the chair that Leighton had put out for him. From the

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expression on the older man's face, Blade realized that
J was probably more nervous than he was. He grinned and raised a hand in
salute as far as the wires would permit.
Then Leighton turned. Blade saw that the scientist's eyes were filled with
very nearly the only excitement he ever permitted himself to show. "Are you
ready, Richard?"
"Ready and eager, sir." That was very nearly true. He felt fit and rested and
hardly nervous at all. If anything, he was looking forward to the challenge
that a new dimension would throw at him.
Leighton nodded, and pulled down on the red master switch.
Instantly smoke began to pour out of the consoles in great swirling
yellow-brown clouds. For a moment
Blade thought that the computer had finally blown up. Then as the smoke
swirled around him and he took a sniff, he realized that the computer had him
in its grip after all. He was sliding out of Home Dimension.
Leighton and J and the computer consoles and then even the walls of the booth
slowly vanished into the smoke. It seemed to be pouring up from below now,
eddying and flowing as though unfelt puffs of wind were disturbing it.
Blade tried to raise his arms, found them unencumbered by wires. He now
realized that the chair was gone, that he was sitting on a flat metallic
surface.
He rose to his feet. As he did so, the smoke around him swirled away on all
sides until he stood in the middle of a patch of clean air. Beneath his feet
the surface showed pale blue with gold threads running through it.
He stepped forward, and the edges of the clear space in the smoke writhed and
jerked as it tried to keep up with him. He moved slowly at first, one step at
a time. Then bit by bit he increased his speed, as though there were a siren
voice calling him somewhere ahead in the smoke. He had no will to do anything
but keep moving steadily forward, now at a walk, now at a jog, now at a run.
The clear space around him kept pace.
Then he felt the surface under his feet begin to change. First it stopped
being smooth, as though there were a thin layer of mud on it. Then it was not
quite so hard anymore-the mud seemed to be getting deeper. And then it
unmistakably began to slope downward. At first it was a gentle slope, then it
became steeper. Blade tried to slow down, to hold back, but found that he
couldn't. He felt the surface under him turn liquid, then the angle of the
slope increased still further, until it was almost vertical. He was falling,
falling down in a waterfall of liquid, falling endlessly. The smoke stopped
trying to stay clear of him and moved in on him again. As it touched his skin,
he felt sensation leave him. As it swallowed him up entirely, it was like
being swallowed up in a great black pit, without light or sound or sensation.
CHAPTER TWO
Blade awoke lying on his back in tall grass. His head was throbbing with the
usual splitting headache that followed being hurled into Dimension X. But that
was now more or less a welcome sign. It indicated that he was back in the real
world, instead of being stuck in some limbo halfway between dimensions like a
kitten up a tree.
Directly above him, the branches of a tall tree spread across his field of
vision. From the branches drooped pale green leaves nearly three feet long
stirring slightly in a faint, hot breeze. A glaring yellow sun

burned down with tropical fury through the leaves, making Blade wince and turn
his head aside. The glare did not help his headache. Around him in the grass
he could hear the buzz and hum of insects, and once a flock of birds flew
squawking across a patch of blue sky visible through the leaves.
A tremendous bellowing roar suddenly sounded nearby, a single blast at first
but echoed at once by half a dozen more. It sounded like a chorus of foghorns.
Then the sequence came again, definitely louder. A
heavy, irregular vibration came to Blade through the ground. When the

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bellowing sounded for a third time, he did not wait any longer. Ignoring the
stabbing pains in his head; he scrambled to his feet and climbed the tree as
fast as he could. He preferred to watch whatever was approaching from a safe
and high perch, where he would be in no danger of being trampled underfoot.
High above the ground he perched himself in the fork of two stout branches. On
three sides the land stretched away as far as Blade could see, level as a
table and covered with the long grass, occasional low trees, and extensive
patches of shrubbery. On the fourth side the trees and shrubs slowly
thickened, until a few hundred feet away they became a solid mass of greenery.
The bellowing sounded for the fourth time. A tremendous crashing and
splintering followed as bushes and small trees went over or came up by the
roots. Then a line of huge gray beasts came lumbering out of the forest.
They were at least a hundred yards away, but Blade was quite happy that he was
already up in a tree.
They were easily the size of full-grown African elephants, and very nearly the
same ashy, dirty gray. But these beasts were built lower to the ground, with
four thick legs splayed out to the side and ending in massive blunt-clawed
feet. The head was almost square, with small ears now standing erect and a
blunt piglike snout instead of a trunk. But what drew Blade's eye most was the
tusks.
From the cheeks of each beast, two enormous, dirty, yellow-white tusks jutted
forward. The shortest pair was easily six feet long. Blade noticed that they
were slightly flattened at the ends as well, like the blades of gigantic
shovels. The beasts kept streaming out of the forest and lumbering onto the
open plain, all except for one. That one was the largest, with tusks that must
have stretched a good nine feet. It stationed itself at the edge of the
forest, and every few seconds it threw its head back and gave the bellow Blade
had first heard. When the last of the beasts was clear of the forest, their
leader turned, gave a final bellow, and then set off at a fast rolling trot to
catch up with its followers. Only when the whole herd of two dozen or more of
the beasts was well out on the plain did Blade consider climbing down.
Now his problem was getting something between his bare skin and the sun. It
was glaring down on him with a fury that was already bringing the sweat out on
his skin. It was fortunate that he had tanned himself to a turn in
theMediterranean. Otherwise he would have faced the prospect of spending the
next few days recovering from a bad sunburn.
A quick experimental tug showed that the three-foot leaves of the tree came
loose easily enough. Blade climbed out on the heavier of the two branches
until he felt it begin to sag under him, snapping the huge leaves off short
and dropping them to the ground. By the time he scrambled down the tree,
scraping his skin on the rough bark, a couple of bushels of leaves lay on the
grass.
As a trained survival expert, it was no great matter for him to take the grass
and leaves and weave himself a hat and a sort of apron or loincloth. These
would be enough at least to keep the sun off his head and the thorns out of
his genitals.
Now for a weapon. Not for use against the big, tusked animals-short of
carrying a big-game rifle, the best thing to do about them was to climb trees.
But there were bound to be other less unmanageable but perhaps no less
dangerous animals. He had seen no sign of human beings; perhaps this was
finally the uninhabited dimension. But he wasn't going to assume he had the
forest and plain all to himself, not yet at

any rate. Finding out the hard way was too dangerous in Dimension X.
He set off toward the forest. After a hundred feet his path met the trail
beaten through the grass and shrubbery by the herd of tuskers, and the going
became easier. As the forest rose to meet him and rose around him, Blade
became more and more alert. He found himself trying to watch the trees for
things jumping down on him, the ground ahead for snakes and thorns, and all

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around him for whatever other dangerous life this forest might hold.
He had covered about a hundred yards in from the edge of the forest when he
came to a cluster of saplings lying scattered in all directions. The tuskers
had been at work here, obviously, using their tusks to uproot the saplings and
then leisurely stripping them of their leaves. Most of the saplings were bare
sticks now. Blade bent down and searched the wreckage until he found a sapling
broken off into about a six-foot length. He picked it up, swung it first with
one hand, then with the other, then with both. It balanced well enough for
green wood, and it was certainly better than bare hands. Much better than bare
hands for Richard Blade, who knew a great deal about the use of the
quarterstaff and more than a little kendo.
He was not more confident or less wary as he moved on along the trail. Only a
very foolish or untrained man thinks that he can be careless just because he
has a weapon in his hands. Blade had never been foolish, and he hadn't been
untrained since before he came toOxford. He had been a fencer and a boxer at
his public school. He had no more intention now of getting into trouble than
he had before picking up his staff. But he at least hoped that if trouble came
to him, he would have a better chance of getting out of it.
The next thing to find was water. Here in a tropical country he was going to
have to be much more careful than usual about water. He decided that his best
bet was to keep right on going, following the herd's trail. Not too far,
though. Until he had a better weapon than the staff, he didn't want to spend a
night in the forest. He would be better off out on the plain, preferably up in
a tree, where nothing could come at him without his noticing it.
As he moved on deeper into the forest, he heard and saw unmistakable signs of
abundant wild life. He heard no more of the trumpeting and bellowing of the
tuskers. But several times he heard full-throated roars that sounded far too
much like a lion's for comfort. Once he heard a sharp grunting noise close by.
It broke off in a shrill scream and a violent crashing sound, as though a
violent fight were going on. Blade stopped dead and held his staff ready until
the crashing died away. It was replaced by a series of contented grumblings
and the sound of powerful jaws crunching bones. Whatever had just killed its
prey out there in the forest either had not caught his scent or was too busy
dismembering its first kill to be interested in another. Very definitely he
would be better off out on the plain after darkness fell!
He took more care to tread softly after this, feeling with his staff for a
solid footing at each step forward.
But still, thorn-covered branches raked his bare calves, exposed roots caught
his toes and made him stagger, branches snapped under his weight with cracks
that sounded in his cars as loud as gunshots.
He must have scrambled and stumbled a good two miles into the forest by now.
When a gap in the forest cover showed him the sky, the sun was still high
overhead, but definitely beginning to slide lower.
Darkness came quickly in the tropics. He would have to ration his time, to
give himself enough for the trek back out of the forest.
Still onward. The heat had been brutal enough out in the open plain, under the
sun. Here in the forest there was shade, but there was not a breath of air
moving. Sweat poured off Blade; he was as wet as if he had been swimming.
Insects attracted by the smell of sweat swarmed around him, forming a whining

cloud in front of his eyes and around his head, darting in, nipping and
biting. Some of the bites drew blood, and other insects, attracted in turn by
the blood, came droning in to add themselves to the swarm.
Blade snapped off a branch from a fallen tree and waved it in front of his
face with his free hand. That at least kept them out of his eyes, but all the
rest of his body still lay open to their attack. His throat was dry and sour
with thirst, but right at the moment he would have traded ten gallons of water
for a can of insect repellent.
Then suddenly the trail broadened. Blade stopped. Not more than a hundred feet

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ahead, the trail seemed to come to an end in a wide open space with trees
growing close around it. He moved forward even more cautiously than before,
taking one step at a time and listening between each step. Nothing for a long
time, except the buzz and shrill whine of the insects. Then, coming from the
clearing ahead, he heard the sound of something large splashing through water.
If he could have stopped breathing, Blade would have done so. He waited until
the sound died away, and then moved forward again. Now he caught the scent of
water in the faint breeze that blew down the trail. He took the last few
steps, and found himself on the edge of a broad pond.
The pond was circular, roughly a hundred feet in diameter. On three sides
trees grew closely around it and overhung it, drooping branches downward until
the leaves dangled in the water. On the fourth side, where Blade stood, a
broad rim of bare black earth showed the footprints of hundreds of animals.
Most of the prints were the circular four-clawed marks of the tuskers, sunk a
foot or more into the soft ground.
The water looked clear and clean. Only a few patches of fallen leaves and one
or two floating branches dotted its shimmering blue-green surface. On Blade's
left, a misshapen tree trunk lay half submerged, sagging downward into the
water. Blade shifted his grip on the staff so that he could strike out with
one hand, and stepped out onto the open bank.
As he did so, the tree trunk came alive. It writhed backward, bent into a bow,
and lifted a head as large as a horse's up from the surface of the pond. The
head rose slowly, bobbing and weaving at the end of a neck thicker than
Blade's own body, occasionally opening a mouth rimmed with foot-long
dagger-pointed teeth.
At the first movement of the snake Blade froze, at the second he began inching
back into the cover of the trees. The head swiveled back and forth ten feet
above the ground. Green-hued eyes the size of dinner plates scanned the edges
of the pond. Then the snake lowered itself down to the ground, and began
slowly and steadily to pull itself out of the forest onto the bank.
Blade swore mentally. Against that monster his staff would be about as useful
as a Boy Scout knife. As long as it was camped on the edge of the pond, it
would be a risky business to try getting water. He could only hope the snake
wasn't settling down; for its afternoon nap.
More and more of the mottled black-brown body flowed out of the forest, until
there must have been sixty feet of yard-thick snake stretched along the bare
earth. The breeze carried its faint musk to Blade.
He swallowed, his mouth and throat suddenly drier than even his thirst had
made them.
Then from off to his right, near the far end of the earth bank, came the
unmistakable sound of a wooden drum. It came in a rapid, staccato rhythm-boom
boom boom boom-and then a long rolling brrrrrmmmm.
Blade stiffened. So did the snake. Its scales grated on the earth as it heaved
its head upright again, once more searching all around it. The drum sound came
again. The snake's head swayed, then dropped to the earth, and it began to
move. Slowly at first, then more rapidly, it slithered along the bank, past
the motionless and silent Blade, and then on to the trail left by the tuskers.
In a minute the last few feet of its

tail had vanished from sight. Blade heard the scrapings and cracklings it made
as it writhed its way through the tangle of smashed undergrowth along the
trail, then those too faded away. Silence returned to the pond.
Blade heaved a sigh of relief, but only a small sigh. Somebody lurking in the
forest nearby had beaten that drum. He might be as dangerous as the snake.
Blade licked dry lips, then decided to take a chance.
He was not going to get water or find out anything about his invisible
neighbors by clinging to this tree.
Lifting his staff, he stepped slowly out onto the bare earth of the bank. He
took two more steps, taking him well clear of the trees. Then he lifted his

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staff high over his head, and rammed it hard into the soft ground so that it
stood upright, quivering slightly. He turned away from it, toward the place
where the drums had sounded. Then slowly he raised his arms and spread his
hands, palms outward, in a gesture of peace.
A nerve-wracking moment of silence followed. Then there was a faint swish and
crackle in the bushes, and six men sprang out of the shadows onto the bank.
CHAPTER THREE
Blade was not particularly surprised. Neither, it seemed, were the six men.
They spread out as they reached the bank, forming a curved line that stretched
from the water on one side to the edge of the forest on the other. All six
were tall, thin, and deep reddish brown in color. They wore wide swatches of
dyed animal hide around their waists and fur anklets. All six carried spears
as tall as they were, with broad leaf-shaped iron blades nearly two feet long.
Blade did not like the look of those spears, nor did he like the way the men
were looking at him. He backed away one step, then two, until the staff was in
front of him where he could grab it in a hurry.
The apparent leader, marked by a tuft of blue feathers tied around his spear,
stepped out in front of the line and looked Blade over from head to foot.
Blade kept his arms raised and his palms out, even though he was itching to
snatch the staff out of the ground. Then the man frowned.
"He makes the Peace Hand."
There were growls from some of the other men. One of them said, "But he is of
Kanda. Maybe even of
Rulam. Look at his skin."
"You look at his hands."
"I do. He makes the Peace Hand because he does not want to die."
"Who does?"
"You do not, I see, Nayung. He is only one man and has only a stick. Well,
then, I will kill him."
The speaker leaped forward, spear raised high in both hands and stabbing
downward. Blade leaped out from under the down-plunging point with split
seconds to spare and jerked the staff out of the ground.
Another spear stab, another leap backward, and Blade had time to bring the
staff up into a guard position. Then the spear lunged downward again, and
Blade had to jump back a third time.
"You are a coward," snarled his opponent. "I will not eat your heart when you
are dead. I will feed it to the pigs with the rest of your insides.. I,
Chamba, say this."

"Your pigs will go hungry," said Blade, smiling. Chamba seemed to know only
one way of using his spear. He stood there glaring at Blade, spear raised, and
as wide open as a child for a thrust with the butt of Blade's staff. Blade
shifted his grip again, sliding both hands down toward one end of the staff.
Chamba laughed harshly. "What are you going to do with that little stick,
coward? It is green wood. It would not even make good burning in your Death
Fire if I gave you one.
Again Blade smiled. "And I have a question for you, Chamba. Your pigs eat
cowards. What do you have here that eats fools?" Chamba stiffened, his arm
muscles knotted, and he let out an ear-splitting scream of rage. Then he
seemed to be hurtling through the air toward Blade, once again lunging down
with his spear point.
This time Blade did not move backward. Nor did he close in. Instead he snapped
his staff forward, straight at Chamba's unguarded stomach, pulling his blow at
the last possible instant. The end of the staff, solid wood with Blade's
massive arm muscles behind it, took Chamba in the stomach. He gasped and the
reckless grin vanished from his face.
Before he could recover, Blade took the offensive. The staff lunged forward
again. First it smashed into
Chamba's wrist. A quick shifting of hands, and the staff swung up, over, and

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came down like a club on
Chamba's shoulder. One arm and one hand disabled, he dropped his spear and
stood shaking his head in bewilderment. He was still shaking it when Blade
swung the staff around in a level sweep to his temple.
For the fourth time Blade pulled the blow-he did not want to kill the man-but
Chamba dropped as though he had been hit with an axe.
The leader Nayung was staring at Blade with curiosity now. Then he smiled.
"Man of Kanda, I think we will eat your heart. I promise this as a D'bor of
Zunga." His chest swelled out as he took in breath. Then all that breath
rushed out in a scream. At the leader's signal all five of the Zungans charged
at Blade simultaneously.
Two of the warriors had to leap over Chamba's fallen body as they came at
Blade. One of them landed slightly off balance. In the seconds while the man
was straightening up, Blade drove the staff in under his spear and hard into
his kneecap. Blade felt bone smash under the impact. The man screamed and fell
on his face in the dirt, clutching at his knee.
But the other four fighters were all around Blade now, circling him
cautiously, trying to get at least two behind him before they rushed him.
Again Blade shifted his grip, watching Nayung's eyes for a signal. The
D'bor's eyes narrowed, and Blade saw a tightening of his chest muscles as he
got ready to give his war cry again.
Then Blade's staff moved. Backward it went this time, straight into the groin
of the warrior angling in toward Blade's right rear. Before the man had hit
the ground, Blade had pulled the staff back in and swung it horizontally
again, jerking the tip up at the last moment. The staff came up under the arm
of the man on his right, smashing it into the air, sending the man's spear
flying. He stepped back, his arm dangling, staring at Blade. Four down or out.
Nayung was no longer smiling. His mouth was drawn tight, and his voice came
out as a growl as he spoke to his sole remaining companion. "Guard me," he
said. Then he tossed his spear up into the air, and caught it as it came down.
Now he held it with both hands near the butt. But instead of moving in, he
stood where he was, spreading his legs apart for better balance.

Blade guessed what was coming just in time. As the sharp spear point swept in
a horizontal arc like a scythe, he sprang clear. The razor-sharp black edge
whistled by inches from his stomach. He took a step forward, then hastily
backed away as the other warrior advanced, spear held for the conventional
downward thrust. Blade lifted his staff to thrust at the second man, and then
had to back off again as
Nayung's spear whistled toward him again.
Four, five, six times in succession this happened. Now it was Blade's turn to
stop smiling. By luck or skill
Nayung and his companion had worked out a stronger system of complementary
fighting styles. Blade realized he would have to change his own approach. And
he would have to do it soon. Before long
Nayung would go over to the attack. Blade knew he would have to gamble. As the
deadly ballet of stab and swing went on, a plan began to form in his mind.
Nayung's spear was swinging out, far to the right, ready to come around for
another slash. The companion hovered, ready to drive Blade back if he tried to
close. Nayung's spear whipped forward.
Blade guessed its height above the ground, and dropped into a squatting
position, head pulled down into his shoulders like a turtle. The spear blade
whistled over his head. As it did so, Blade snapped his staff forward, into
Nayung's stomach. He had to move too fast to pull that blow. The staff folded
Nayung practically double and sent him tottering backward, to fall to the
ground a few feet away.
If the last warrior was frightened at facing Blade alone, he gave no sign of
it. Before Nayung hit the ground he rushed in, spear stabbing downward. Blade
closed barely enough to avoid being spitted. The spear slashed down past his

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back, the sharp edge slicing through the leaves of his loincloth. As the spear
came down, his own staff came up, one end smashing vertically into the
warrior's jaw. Blade was able to pull this blow, otherwise it would have gone
right on up into the man's brain. Instead, the warrior went limp all over and
fell face down on the ground. Blade checked to see that he was still
breathing, and then stood up.
Carefully he went around to each of the six men; picking up each one's spear
and giving it back to him.
He saved Nayung for last.
As Blade handed the leader his spear, the man's eyes followed him with utter
amazement written all over the mahogany face. Nayung was obviously seeing
something he could not understand. Finally he got up enough nerve to speak.
"Warrior of Kanda, are you not going to slay us?"
Blade shook his head angrily. "Why should I? And do not call me a warrior of
Kanda! I am not from there. I have never been there in my life." He was about
to add that nothing in the world would ever make him go there, then decided
against embroidering his story too much. As long as they believed he was not
from Kanda, they would be less likely to stick spears into him first and ask
questions later. There would be other and better times for telling the story
of where he really came from.
Nayung shook his head slowly, as if shaking it hard might make it fall off,
and rubbed his stomach. Then he said, "No, you must be right. No slavehunter
of Kanda would ever spare six warriors of Zunga if he had them where you have
us now." He could not quite bring himself to say at your mercy. "And there are
few of the slavehunters who could defeat six Zungan warriors." He struggled to
a sitting position. "If you are not of Kanda, are you of Rulam?"
Blade shook his head. "I am not of Rulam either. And while I am not going to
kill or hurt any of you, I do think I am going to ask the questions for a
little while. Then you may ask me who I am, and I will tell the truth if you
do." He lifted the staff to emphasize his words. "First, tell me what is
Zunga?"

Nayung looked at him as blankly as if he had been a man inLondonand Blade had
just asked him what wasEngland. Obviously he did not want to believe that
Blade was mad, but he was having a hard time believing anything else.
Finally he found his voice. "It is the land of the People."
Blade nodded. That was enough to go on for now, at least about Zunga. "And
what is Kanda?"
Nayung's face darkened. "The city of the Priests of the Ivory Tower. The city
of the killers of the Ivory
People and the ivory thieves. A city of slave raiders. They come and take us
away, to Kanda or even to
Rulam. We die there in Rulam. We die in the firestone mines, we die in the
arenas, we die in the slave barracks."
Blade asked another question. "Is Rulam another city?"
"Yes." Nayung grimaced. "Without the soldiers of Rulam, we would not fear
Kanda and the Priests of the Ivory Tower. We could march up to its walls and
climb over them, kill all the Priests and take our ivory back from the tower.
But Rulam sends soldiers. They have swords and hats and coats of iron. We
cannot fight them with our spears." Nayung suddenly seemed to realize how much
he was telling this stranger, and clamped his jaw shut.
Blade ignored the gesture. He could fill in the details later, without asking
any more questions now. He stood up and said, "As I told you, I am not from
Kanda, and I am not from Rulam. My name is Richard
Blade-"
"You have two names?"
"Nayung," said Blade gently but with an edge in his voice, "I said I would ask
the questions for now.
Yes, I have two names. I come from the land of the English. I am a warrior

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there. I have coarse to
Zunga-" and there he had to break off suddenly. What was a safe reason to give
for his coming to
Zunga? Curiosity, they would not believe. And they might very easily think an
explorer was another kind of slave raider or ivory poacher.
"I was exiled fromEnglandby my king," he began. "Now I must wander from
country to country, living as well as I can by my skills as a warrior. I have
become a better warrior during my wanderings, though. I
have learned many things about fighting." He did not go on to offer to teach
the Zungans some of what he knew. This was not the time yet. He wanted to look
around him a little more first.
Nayung laughed. "You are not telling us anything we do not know already when
you say that you are a great warrior. There has never been a warrior who could
defeat six Zungans single-handed without taking a single wound. Chamba boasted
that he could, but never tried to do it. It is too bad that he did not try.
He would have been killed or disgraced, and we would have been spared having
to listen to him for many months." Again Nayung's face clouded as he realized
he had been speaking too freely, and he was silent for a while.
Then he painfully dragged himself to his feet and spread out both hands toward
Blade. "I make the
Peace Hand to you, Richard Blade of the English. And I tell you that you do
not need to travel on beyond thelandofZunga. You will have my voice for you
among our people as long as I live."
Blade grinned and returned Nayung's gesture. "That is good. Then I will go
with you and your warriors

to your camp tonight. Is it far?"
Nayung shook his head. "Our camp is only an hour from here. That way." He
pointed across the pond.
"We are hunters who came to the forest to hunt one of the Ivory People and
bring his ivory back. The
Ivory People were drinking at this water when we came upon them. But they
scented us, and ran off before we could spear one according to the laws and
customs. We waited, hoping they might come back, but saw only the Lomban." He
made a sinuous motion with his hands that told Blade he meant the big snake.
"Then we beat our drums to drive the Lomban away. After that, we saw you step
out on the bank and make the Peace Hand. We came out to find out who you were.
We learned."
Blade laughed. "You did indeed. And I learned who you are. Good men, brave
warriors." He pointed to the other five men sitting or lying on the ground. "I
came to this water to drink, and I have not done so.
Why don't you get your men on their feet while I drink?"
CHAPTER FOUR
By the time Blade had drunk enough to quench his thirst and had filled the
hollow gourd that Nayung had given him to use as a water bottle, the Zungan
warrior had gone around to all of his men. Those who had been unconscious he
had revived, gently or roughly as the case required-Chamba very roughly
indeed.
The man with the smashed kneecap, however, could not walk. Even to try
standing made him scream again in agony and, collapse, writhing on the ground.
Nayung looked down at him, his face set hard.
"He cannot walk. The spirits of his feet are gone. If we had an Ulunga with us
we might try to bring the spirits back to his feet. But none of us, is an
Ulunga. He cannot walk, and we cannot carry him. It is our custom then for the
D'bor to give him a quick death with the spear, so that all the other spirits
of his body may go together. If we leave him here... "
Blade nodded and raised a hand. "I understand. But if your camp is only an
hour away, I think I can carry him myself. If I cannot do so by myself, I know
a way in which two can carry him."

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Nayung was looking at Blade with interest when Chamba strode forward, waving
his spear in his left hand. "Nayung, do you call this man a warrior when he is
so soft he will not see that the customs must be followed? If neither of you
has the courage to follow them, then I will." The spear in Chamba's hand
stabbed downward into the chest of the man on the ground before anybody could
move. The man gasped, clutched at the spear shaft for a moment, then relaxed
all over and lay still.
Nayung glared at Chamba. "Chamba, you have a very thick head. But if you ever
do this again, I will break that head into so many pieces that its spirits
will spend the next thousand years finding them." His grip on his spear shaft
tightened. "The warrior Richard Blade of the English is second to me now. Do
you understand?" The spear came up and the point was leveled at Chamba's
stomach.
Chamba looked down at the spear, then up to Nayung's grim face, and nodded
slowly.
"Good," said Nayung. He turned to Blade. "If that fool Chamba makes any more
trouble, kill him."
Blade nodded reluctantly. He didn't like Chamba any better than Nayung did,
but he wasn't sure if it was a good idea to humiliate such a proud and
dangerous man in front of a stranger. Chamba would be thinking of revenge now
that was certain.
The six men moved out. They walked through the forest in single file, with
Nayung leading and Blade bringing up the rear. That was just as well. He did
not want Chamba behind him for now.

The Zungans stepped along at a pace that Blade could only match with effort.
They plowed straight along through the forest, stopping every fifteen minutes
or so to take their bearings. Blade asked Nayung about this during one of the
halts.
"The men of Kanda and Rulam do not come into the forests," said the Zungan.
"They are afraid. That was why I thought you might not be a Kandanor a Rulami,
since you have gone where they never go."
"What of the animals in the forest?"
"The animals do not bother us. Only sworn warriors go into the forest, to hunt
the Ivory People, and the animals know that such warriors are dangerous to
attack. So they avoid us."
Blade nodded. "But if the Kandans and the Rulami do not go into the forest,
why don't all the Zungans move into the forest and be safe from the raiders?"
Nayung looked at Blade as though he had just accused the Zungan of murdering
his own grandmother.
"Only sworn warriors blessed by the Ulungas may enter the forests. The women
and children and men past the age of being warriors are forbidden. The spirits
of their bodies would depart if they did so."
It was on the tip of Blade's tongue to ask whether any woman or child had ever
tested this theory by going into the forest. But he decided against it. He
would not earn Nayung's trust by expressing heretical opinions about the
Zungans' beliefs. He merely nodded and said nothing.
They reached the camp while the sun was still sending a golden glow down
through the thinner patches of leaves. It was a neat little compound,
obviously permanent. Its floor was of beaten earth, and Nayung immediately
sent two of the warriors back into the forest to pick up fresh leaves to cover
the floor. Its walls were of branches and saplings, interlaced with thorny
twigs to present a prickly face to the world.
More saplings were laid across the tops of the walls, and yet more of the
three-foot leaves laid across the saplings to make a roof. There were clay
pots filled with dried meat, fruit, and water.
Blade praised the shelter to Nayung, and saw that the man was pleased. "You
English must be a wise and understanding people. The Kandans think we are evil
because we do not obey the Priests of the

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Ivory Tower and keep our women as slaves. The Rulami think we are savages
because we are brown-skinned and live in towns on the plains, instead of in a
great crowded, noisy city the way they do.
Our people could never live the way the Rulami do. The spirits of their bodies
would go away. You
English must teach your warriors not to look down on other peoples, but to
take each for what they are worth. That is a very wise thing. When you are too
old to be a warrior, you will be an adviser to the king because of your
wisdom."
Blade saw no point in explaining that he would be returning to the land of the
English long before enough years had passed to force him to retire as a Zungan
warrior. Or if not returning toEngland, at least moving on to another land
than Zunga. Nayung obviously liked and trusted him, wanted to treat him as a
friend, and wanted to see him stay and be accepted by the Zungans. Blade
suspected that Nayung also had in mind his value as an ally for some plans of
his own.
There was plenty of food and water for all six men, and Blade dug in
vigorously, not trying to hide the appetite he had worked up since his arrival
in this dimension. Chamba jeered at him for that.
"Blade," he said, "a Zungan warrior can march for two days and then fight a
great battle on half of what you have eaten and drunk at one sitting."

"I don't doubt it," said Blade. "But if he cannot reach his goal before the
enemy does, or win the battle when he meets the enemy, what good does that do?
And if he has not eaten and drunk enough simply to prove how strong he is,
then he has simply proved that he has the brains of a little cheeping bird as
well as the appetite of one."
If Nayung had not fixed him with a glare, Chamba would have jumped up and
hurled himself on Blade then and there. It occurred to Blade that he might
wisely be a little less sharp-tongued with Chamba. On the other hand, the man
was obviously Nayung's enemy as well as his own. For Blade's own safety, he
decided to deal with Chamba fairly soon. Baiting him was the best way to push
him into the necessary fight. But it would definitely be better to wait until
they had reached the home territory of the Zungans, and Blade had gained some
status among them. This would keep people from asking too many nasty questions
of either him or Nayung when Chamba did not come back from the hunting trip.
In spite of his words to Blade, Chamba ate like a starving man, then lay down
and promptly fell asleep.
Nayung looked down at him with a sour smile on his face. "He is quite certain
that he is too good to be asked to wear himself out mounting guard." Nayung
shrugged. "It seems to be up to me, then. I..."
Blade shook his head. "You have been hunting all day. I have not traveled far,
and I am less tired than you are. I will keep the first watch tonight."
Nayung tried to argue, more out of his pride as a warrior than because he
disagreed with Blade or resented his offer. But eventually he gave in and lay
down on the carpet of leaves. He was asleep within a few moments. The other
warriors soon joined him.
Blade picked up one of the spears and hefted it experimentally. The spearhead
was actually more like a short sword. It was about two feet long from socket
to point, about five inches across at its widest point, and nearly half an
inch thick in the middle. It was made of poor-quality wrought iron. Both the
point and the edge were surprisingly sharp, considering the quality of the
iron. In fact, the workmanship of the whole spear was considerably better than
the materials. The Zungans obviously were proud of their weapons and spent
much time and thought in making them.
Then Blade examined the spear shaft. It was four feet of tough, limber, and
exceedingly hard wood. He tried to pull the spearhead off, to test the balance
of the shaft without the head, but the socket was too tight. So he stood up
and went through a series of quarterstaff and kendo movements with the

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complete spear. Then he grinned again. With some more weight at the butt end,
the spear would be perfectly balanced for use as quarterstaff. The wood was
excellent. In fact, the spear would probably be a more effective weapon
without the head, if all the head was used for was that overhead downstroke or
the windmill slash that Blade had seen in the fight.
Suddenly Blade felt light-headed and almost buoyant. Less than twelve hours
after arriving in this dimension, his training with weapons had already put
one key to solving the Zungan's problems into his hand. Then he shut off that
line of thought and took a more sober look at the situation.
The Zungans were obviously much given to being hostile to strangers. He could
not blame them, but here it was. His own prospects for a peaceful reception
still depended on Nayung. And he had no idea what
Nayung's reaction would be to turning the entire Zungan fighting style head
over heels with this new method. Blade knew he had better find out before he
started shooting off his mouth. Such a proud people as the Zungans might balk
at learning from even a friendly stranger.
He knew at least which side he should be on in this dimension. Nayung had
described the Kandans and

the Rulami as raiding the Zungans for slaves-mine slaves, domestic slaves, and
gladiators. That didn't necessarily make them completely evil. But Blade had a
perspective on slavery that few modern men had. He had been a slave several
times, and what it did to a man's spirit was not something written in the
pages of a book. He might not aid the Zungans if he found them unwilling or
unable to accept his aid. But it would take some very extraordinary virtues
among the Kandans or the Rulami to make him willing to help either one of
them.
That settled that point in his mind for the time being. He stood up, and began
a slow walk around the wall of the little compound, peering out into the
darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
They spent four more nights in the forest, each in one of the little
compounds. Twice Nayung and
Chamba had to go out with their spears and clay pots and bring back fruit and
small animals. They ate the animals raw-fire was taboo in the forest. Once
Blade went to refill the water jugs. Chamba promptly jeered at him for this.
"The English warriors have no sense of shame, I see. They will do women's work
without complaint.
They will even ask to do it. Can you have babies also, Blade?"
At that remark Nayung was probably closer than Blade to putting a spear
through Chamba on the spot.
It was Blade who, held the two men apart. If Nayung killed Chamba, well and
good. But if Chamba killed Nayung, Blade would at once have to kill Chamba.
And they might also kill or disable each other.
In either of the last two cases Blade knew he would be left with the job of
leading the remaining warriors out of a vast forest that he did not know, back
to their homes among a people he knew even less well.
And he would be pitchforked straight among those people with no one to sponsor
him or teach him the ropes. No, this was not the time or place for a finish
fight between Chamba and either himself or Nayung.
Once the rage had gone out of Nayung's face, Blade turned to Chamba and said,
"Your tongue is waving again, Chamba, like a dry leaf in the wind. I go to
bring the water because this is not a forest of the land of the English. I do
not know how to hunt its animals, I do not know what fruits are good to eat.
If I went out to gather fruit, I might bring back something poisonous. And
then you would stuff your swollen guts full of it, and that would be the end
of you. Do you want to risk that, Chamba?"
Chamba didn't. Nayung burst out laughing at the expression on the other
warrior's face, and said, "Blade, is the art of using one's tongue as a weapon

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practiced among all the English warriors? Or are you the only one who has
learned this? The spirit of your head must be very wise indeed if you are. You
stick your words into that man like one of the Ivory People digging up the
ground with his tusks."
"When we are at home, I will fight Blade, and I will cut that tongue out of
his mouth with a dull knife,"
snarled Chamba. He could barely keep himself from grinding his teeth in rage.
"Then I will throw it on a fire, and we will see if it is a very good weapon
when I roast it and eat it!"
"I do not know how good a weapon it would be either," said Blade. "It would
not be ruled then by the spirit of my head. But at least it is ruled as long
as it is in my head. Yours flaps and waves by itself even now." He picked up
the water pots and strode off toward the spring before Chamba could move or
speak again.
So they marched across the forest; with Blade and Chamba swapping verbal
thrusts every mile or so.
On the afternoon of the fifth day Blade noticed that the greenery overhead was
beginning to thin out noticeably. Soon they began passing open spaces, where
the sun glared down onto patches of grass

cropped short by any number of animals and marred with their droppings and
footprints.
Blade noticed that the Zungans were beginning to move more cautiously. Their
eyes roved about ceaselessly, and their hands were tighter on their spears
than before. Blade hardly needed Nayang's warning that they were coming to the
edge of the northern plains. There the slave raiders might be met, although
Nayung admitted it was rare for them to travel all the way to the edge of the
forest. Rare, but not unheard of. So from here to the town ofBronathere was
danger that there had not been before.
There was no permanent camp for them that night. On the edge of the forest one
would have simply been bait to the slave raiders. Instead the party found a
patch where the trees still grew thick, laid down a heavy carpet of leaves,
and made camp there. They had dried meat with them, and with the water from
their gourds they half filled their stomachs before going to sleep. Here two
men mounted guard during the night instead of one. And the other four slept
with their spears close beside them.
Early the next morning they were on the move, striking out across the open
plains toward Brona. North of the forest the land was drier, the ground
harder, the grass shorter. In the south it had reached almost to
Blade's knees. Here it only brushed his ankles. But as in the south, the plain
was still dotted with gnarled trees and patches of low-slung shrubbery.
With Nayung in the lead and Blade at the rear, the band headed north at the
mile-eating jog that put even Blade's muscular legs and good wind to the test.
The hard ground with its wavering of coarse brown-green grass offered good
footing. One stride flowed easily into another, in what seemed like an endless
pattern.
On and on they went. Although Blade had renewed his hat of leaves on the edge
of the forest, he felt the sun beating down on the leaves and through them. It
wilted them until they offered no more protection, then began working on his
head. He knew, logically, that his brains couldn't be getting boiled in his
skull like a potato in its jacket. But it certainly began to feel that way as
the day wore on. Once again he blessed his Mediterranean tan. Without it, he
would have been rapidly turning the color of a boiled lobster. How he would
have felt was better left to the imagination.
None of the Zungans seemed to be showing any sign of fatigue, strain, thirst,
or even heat-sickness.
Blade was a bit surprised. He knew that this was their land, their climate.
But they were made of flesh and blood, not iron.
The hours and the miles rolled by. Once Blade looked through the sweat that

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poured down over his eyes and saw a series of moving gray masses far off
toward the horizon. A herd of the Ivory People. But the beasts ignored the
men, and soon were left behind.
That was not the only wildlife on the plain. More than once Blade saw
antelopelike beasts bounding away, in ones and twos, half-dozens, and entire
herds. Once they came on a decaying carcass, large but beyond recognition now.
Broad-winged birds with rust-colored backs and black bellies soared away from
the carrion, and olive-brown dogs scampered away in all directions. The dogs
made no effort to close with the moving men. Perhaps they ate only carrion,
perhaps a group of six armed men was something they knew to be a tough
proposition. Soon they were out of both sight and earshot, lost in the
vastness of the plain.
Still the Zungans did not slow, although Blade noticed that they were sweating
heavily. The man just ahead of Blade had his eyes half-closed and his face
screwed up into a sort of grimace. It was good to know that at least one of
these supermen was beginning to feel the strain!

Nayung now began looking back toward Blade every few minutes. So did Chamba.
There was open disdain on Chamba's face, but there was something more like
curiosity on Nayung's. Blade was a bit confused. Had his face turned green, or
had something else equally unusual happened to him-
Then the light dawned. Nayung was watching him to see if he could keep up the
pace, or if he showed signs of slowing down and even collapsing. The D'bor
wanted to find out if this Richard Blade of the
English could keep up with Zungan warriors in the field. Blade was almost
willing to bet that Nayung was deliberately forcing the pace to the maximum
his own warriors could take, to test Blade's speed and endurance. And Chamba,
of course, was looking back at him, positive that this Englishman would fall
on his pale face sooner or later and have to be left for the carrion birds and
the scavenger dogs.
If he had felt like wasting the breath, Blade would have sworn, half in
indignation, half in amusement.
Very well. Nayung wanted to see if this new warrior was worthy of being
accepted among the Zungans.
Blade was an expert judge of his own endurance, and he knew that he had ample
reserves left if Brona wasn't too much farther. He checked the position of the
sun. It was well down in the sky already.
Darkness would be falling soon. It would be safe enough to throw away a little
of those reserves of his to drive his point home to Nayung.
Blade started lengthening his stride, and gradually he closed the gap between
him and the next man, and soon he was walking beside him. The Zungan shot
Blade a bewildered look. Then Blade was out in front of the man and angling
back into the line ahead of him. As Nayung looked back this time, Blade would
have sworn he almost started in surprise-and then grinned faintly.
Nayung did not step up the pace, however. A few minutes later Blade moved up
another place. This time Nayung's grin was unmistakable. When Blade moved up a
third place, to move in just behind
Chamba, Nayung showed all of his teeth and raised both clenched fists over his
head in salute.
Chamba, however, was obviously unwilling to be overtaken as easily as the
first two men. Blade saw the
Zungan warrior's long, sinewy legs increase their stride, and pushed his own
pace up a little. Neck and neck, he and Chamba swung out and moved up past the
next man in the line. Then they swung in together just behind Nayung.
Nayung's face was now showing signs of strain. Was physical exhaustion
beginning to set in, or was he again concerned about the rivalry between Blade
and Chamba? Nayung still made no effort to increase the pace, and Chamba found
from somewhere the breath to taunt him for this.
"What is it, Nayung? Can even this woman of an Englishman join me in catching

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up with you?" And he put on a spurt that drew him level with Nayung.
The D'bor wasted no breath in replying to the taunts. He merely looked back
over his shoulder, then the pumping of his long arms increased. This seemed to
pour new breath into his body and new life into his legs. In seconds the gap
between Nayung and the two men behind him was opening rapidly.
That push by Nayung worried Blade. Did the D'bor have the reserves of strength
to keep up this new pace all the way to Brona? Or would he soon fall back and
perhaps be shamed before Chamba? If that happened, it was all the more
important for Blade to keep going, and above all to reach Brona before
Chamba.
Blade increased his own pace a little more, and found that he was pulling
ahead of Chamba. Also the gap between him and Nayung had stopped widening. For
a moment he risked looking back. The other three warriors were moving along
together at a steady lope, but they were definitely falling behind. And

why shouldn't they? They had no stake in this mad race across the plain,
nothing worth breaking their hearts and bursting their lungs to accomplish.
Gradually the movement of Blade's legs and feet slipped out of the reach of
his conscious mind. They settled down to a steady pattern of their own,
endlessly repeated, carrying him forward across the plain.
He was no longer aware of the movement of air in and out of his lungs, of the
expansions and contractions of his chest. He might have been a robot, for all
that his body made itself known to his mind.
Before too much longer he realized that Nayung was definitely weakening. The
Mor's arms now moved more rapidly, almost flailing the air. He no longer
lifted his long-toed feet as high at each stride. In fact, he seemed to be
running almost flat-footed. Sometimes his feet came down so hard that puffs of
dust spurted up from the ground under them.
Chamba was still running beside Blade, and the Zungan showed no signs of
strain. Or did he? Blade noticed cracked lips opening and closing, a
sweat-greased chest heaving more than before. Would he be feeling the strain
himself if he let his body tell him about it? Perhaps. But for now he felt as
though he could keep on running for hours. And he knew it would be up to him
to beat Chamba.
Suddenly Nayung threw up his head and gave a long gasping cry that must have
taken every spare ounce of breath in his body. For a moment Blade thought the
man was going to stumble and fall. But he kept on his feet, only slowing until
Blade and Chamba were level with him. Then they were past him, and he was
falling back still farther, to take a place ahead of the other three warriors.
One of them grinned at
Nayung and reached out to slap him on the back. That man at least did not
think the D'bor shamed and weak.
But Chamba would, and there would be many who would support Chamba. Blade
would have to run that arrogant warrior into the ground, or endanger not only
Nayung but himself. He looked sideways at
Chamba. The man showed no signs of speeding up, but his face wore an exultant
grin.
Then suddenly he did step up the pace, so quickly that he seemed to leap ahead
into the lead in seconds.
Blade clenched his teeth, feeling the gritty dust between them, and followed.
The two men moved out across the plain now a good fifty feet ahead of the
others, and the gap kept widening foot by foot. For the time being Blade was
willing to let Chamba set the pace, and only match him. The time for his own
move into the lead would come, if he lasted long enough. He was not sure he
was going to. The breath rasping in his throat, and the stabbing pains in his
chest, the throbbing ache in his thighs and calves, all were coming through
clearly now.
A minute later Blade realized that Chamba was no longer increasing his speed.
His pounding feet had settled down to a constant pace. It was time for Blade

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to make his move. He tried to breathe even more deeply than before, found it
impossible, and decided to gamble.
As fast as he had been running before, it seemed to him now that he was almost
flying. He barely felt his feet touch the ground, barely heard the breath
wheezing in and out as his lungs clawed at the air. He saw
Chamba stare at him, then he had to turn his head to watch the Zungan warrior.
There was agony, agony of the body and agony of the mind, written all over the
man's face. His arms began to flail and his mouth opened wide, trying to gulp
down as much air as possible. His eyes were no longer focused on Blade, or on
anything else. They stared blindly ahead, into the fading sky, toward the flat
horizon of the endless plain.

Suddenly he stumbled. He did not go down, but the steady pattern of his steps
was broken. In the moments it took Chamba to recover, Blade gained ten feet.
He could no longer look back at the Zungan without risking stumbling and
falling, himself. He put his opponent out of his mind and concentrated on
ignoring the shooting pains in his legs. He knew they and his lungs were both
very close to letting him down. It was going to be a matter of minutes or
seconds.
Then there was a thudding sound behind him. He risked turning his head back to
where Chamba should have been, and saw nothing. He turned farther-and he saw
the Zungan warrior writhing on the ground, kicking his legs and clawing at his
chest, rolling over and over. Nayung and the others had stopped and were
standing over Chamba, looking down at him.
Blade had to force his legs to stop moving, they had been going so long and so
steadily. He stood still for a moment, then turned and walked slowly back to
the others. He could not entirely keep his feet from dragging, or his chest
from heaving like a bellows. But neither could he keep a broad grin off his
sweating face as he looked down at Chamba. He did not feel particularly angry
with the man, only a bit irritated with him for having forced this whole
running match so far beyond the point of reason.
Then Nayung started, and said in an unexpectedly loud voice, "Blade, look!" He
pointed at something to the north, behind Blade.
Blade turned and saw three columns of dark gray smoke curling up into the sky
from below the horizon.
"What is that, Nayung? Brona?"
"Yes. But those are Death Fires."
"Death Fires?"
"Yes. And for a royal death. I hope it is not Prince Makuluno. He was most
worthy." Nayung's face seemed to have gone pale under the sweat. Without
another word, he waved his arm toward the smoke columns and started moving.
One by one the others followed. This time, Chamba brought up the rear.
Blade did not worry about that; the Zungan was too exhausted and ashamed to
try anything for the moment. He was more worried about what lay beneath those
three smoke columns. A royal death? The hour of a royal death was seldom a
good time to arrive among a new people, and often a dangerous one.
CHAPTER SIX
Nayung would have liked to run the rest of the way to Brona, but Chamba at
least could not move faster than a brisk walk. And Nayung and Blade admitted
privately to each other that they really couldn't either.
So they moved toward the smoke on the horizon at what seemed to Blade a
snail's pace after the day's swift run.
It was more than five miles across the plains to Brona, so it was completely
dark long before they sighted the gates. But there were plenty of signs of
human presence long before that.
Herds of cattle, for one thing-enormous herds of large plodding beasts that
looked like a cross between cows and short-haired goats. Their enormous yellow
horns hooked forward; their hides ranged from dusty yellow to black. All of
the herds were ambling in the direction of Brona, each under the charge of

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half a dozen women and small boys armed with pointed sticks. They seemed quite
fearless, darting in and out among beasts ten times their size, like sheepdogs
among sheep.
There were also warriors out on the plain. Most of them were in groups of six,
led by warriors with tufts

of red feathers around their spears. There were two groups of thirty-six, led
by warriors with green-feathered spears. And there was one group of two
hundred or more-two hundred and sixteen, Blade suspected-led by a D'bor with a
blue-feathered spear like Nayung's.
When he saw the D'bor, Nayung's face grew sober, and he hailed the man.
"Why so many warriors out to bring the herds home, Durungu?"
"Have you not heard, Nayung? No, you would not. You have been hunting the
Ivory People since before Prince Makuluno was killed."
Nayung stiffened. In the twilight Blade saw the man's hands tighten on his
spear until the knuckles paled.
His voice grated as he asked, "Killed? Who killed him?"
Durungu shook his head. "No, it was not murder. There is no need to worry
about that. He was killed in a fight with slave raiders and Priests only a
day's march north of Brona. They have brought his body and the bodies of the
slave raiders back here for the death rites."
For the first time Durungu appeared to notice Blade, and his spear jerked up
almost by reflex as he prepared to lunge forward. "Is that a man of Kanda or
Rulam that you bring, to add to the sacrifices at the rites? That will be
welcome to King Afuno."
Nayung shook his head and made Peace Hands. "Put that spear away, Durungu.
This is a warrior and a wise man called Richard Blade, of the English people."
"I never heard of such."
"They live far away. He was exiled from his land and came upon us in the
forest at a water place."
Nayung gave a brief account of his band's adventures since meeting Blade. When
he told of Blade's using a strange new fighting style and defeating all six of
the Zungan warriors without getting a scratch, Durangu looked from Nayung to
Blade and then back to Nayung.
"I do not think you can lie, Nayung. But it is hard to believe that this is
the truth."
Nayung shrugged. "Ask Blade and he will show you. But tomorrow, please." He
went on to tell of the all-day run and the test that Blade had passed so well.
When he told of what happened to Chamba, Durungu laughed out loud.
"I have been waiting for something like that to happen to Chamba. I wish I
could have been there to see it. It is good to hear about that thick-headed
fool meeting his match." Then Durungu's face sobered. "Be sure that you tell
everybody about this Blade. He looks so like a slave raider that there may be
some who will feel like putting a spear through him on sight." He turned and
barked out an order to his company.
They moved off into the gathering darkness at a steady trot.
Nayung started off again, with Blade walking beside him. "You have your
warriors organized, I see. The sixes, the thirty-sixes, and the two hundred
and sixteens. Why by sixes?"
"The Sky Father decreed that we should have only five fingers on each hand and
five toes on each foot.
To divide up our warriors by fives would be imitating the Sky Father's work.
The Ulungas have forbidden it."

Blade nodded. "The Ulungas forbid many things, it seems." Blade left it at
that, but Nayung's voice had an edge as he replied.
"You ask about many things of the Zungans, Richard Blade. Perhaps you want to
make yourself more wise. But now it will not be a good thing for a man who

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looks like a slave raider to go around asking questions about the customs of
the Zungans. We have lived as we live for a thousand years, in the sight of
the Sky Father and with the advice of the Ulungas. Do not question our life,
and ten times over do not question the wisdom of the Ulungas." He lowered his
voice so that only Blade could hear. "At least not except when you are alone
with me. Do you wish to give Chamba a perfect reason to destroy you?"
Blade nodded in understanding and sympathy. Nayung seemed to be chafing more
than a little under the rule of what seemed to be a well-established and
rather stuffy class of priests. And he had to agree that the days after the
death of a royal prince were not a good time to make oneself unpopular.
They walked on through the darkness, past more homeward-bound herds and more
outward-bound soldiers, until finally Blade saw fires glowing in the darkness
ahead. Their yellow light revealed a high wall hundreds of feet long, with a
gate in its center. They headed toward this gate, picking their way through
the cattle that were streaming in through it ahead of them. In a few minutes
they were at the wall, and by the light of fires burning inside Blade could
see the wall clearly for the first time.
It appeared to be made of slabs of turf, piled one on the other and packed
down until they formed a solid mass ten feet high and ten feet thick. On top
of the wall stood sentries, the firelight gleaming on the heads of their
spears. The top of the wall was studded with dry, thorny branches to
discourage climbers.
They passed through the gate. Both on the wall and on the ground sentries
stiffened and raised spears-
as they caught sight of Blade. But Nayung called out to each one, and Blade
saw them nod and lower their spears. It seemed that Nayung was indeed a man to
listen to.
Inside the gate, men and cattle went their separate ways. Small boys and women
wearing only the same leather loincloths as the men drove the cattle into a
series of enormous pens, amid clouds of dust and a tremendous chorus of
bawling and shouting.
Nayung led Blade and the others over an enormous field of beaten earth, easily
a quarter of a mile across. In fact, Blade could see the opposite wall of the
town only a little beyond the end of the field. In the center of the field
three fires were burning, sending up their greasy columns of smoke into the
night sky. Blade saw tall poles standing in a circle around the fires.
Something was hanging from each pole.
Nayung led his companions toward the fires at a trot. Something in the sight
of them seemed to be giving strength to his legs. As they approached the fires
and the poles, Blade saw what hung from them.
From each of the twenty-odd poles a human body hung head down, naked, bloody,
and so thoroughly disemboweled that from throat to waist they were only a huge
gaping cavity. Blade could not be sure of the color of their skins, but it
seemed to be lighter than that of the Zungans, and each man wore a full beard.
At the foot of each pole, metal reflected the firelight-a sword stuck point
down in the earth, a conical hemlet with temple pieces, and a back and breast
plate.
"It was a good kill for the prince before he died," said Nayung, his white
teeth bared in a savage grin. "I
wonder if they died well." He sniffed the wisps of smoke drifting across from
the fire. "Yes, they died well. The pigs will go hungry tonight." Blade
sniffed also, and caught the unmistakable odor of burning flesh in the smoke.

"You burn their-"
"If they die well, we cut their insides out and burn them as an offering to
the Sky Father, that he may eat of their courage. If they die badly, we feed
their guts to the pigs!" He fixed Blade with a stare rather less than
friendly. "Take a good look at those bodies, and remember what I said about
keeping quiet. But do not worry," Nayung added. "I will see to it that you are

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treated as one who died bravely, no matter what.
It will be better for you, and more worthy of a warrior."
"It will be best of all for me to stay alive and serve as a warrior of the
Zungans," said Blade with a thin smile. "I will do my best to make that
happen."
"Good."
Nayung led Blade and the others the rest of the way across the field. Beyond
the field stood row on row of mud and sod huts, roofed with interlaced
branches. A good many warriors were standing about with sober faces, drinking
from clay or wooden bowls, but there were no women or children visible.
Once again faces hardened and spears snapped up as Nayung led Blade past, and
once again Nayung's explanations got the spears lowered. Blade did not
entirely like some of the looks that followed him, however. He was becoming
even more aware than he had been before that among the Zungans he would be
very much on probation for the time being.
They plunged into the narrow, foul-smelling lanes that wriggled and wandered
their way among the huts.
Chamba and the other three warriors left them at the door of a compound within
a compound, filled with long buildings that appeared to serve as barracks for
the younger warriors. Nayung gave Chamba a final warning in parting.
"Remember-no women or beer until you have seen the Ulungas."
Chamba grunted. "With the prince dead, the Ulungas will be so busy with the
death rites it will be a week before they have time for a hunter returning
from the Ivory People. I am a man, Nayung. How long am I supposed to wait?
Until my balls dry up and wither away like a stalk of grass?" He turned his
back contemptuously and stamped away into the barracks compound.
Nayung shook his head, then shrugged. "He is usually much more reverent toward
the Ulungas. Well, if he goes on like this, the Ulungas will hear of it, and
then his past reverence for them will not save him.
And we will be rid of him.
"I think that it would be wise for you also to take no women or beer until the
Ulungas have seen you and
I have explained to them what and who you are. You are not bound by a hunter's
oath as we are, but for a man returning from the lands of the Ivory People it
would look well to obey our customs."
"Nayung," said Blade with a weary grin, "right now I don't want either beer or
women. I want food, water, and many hours of sleep."
Nayung smiled. "I think I can provide that. If you will follow me to my
house..."
CHAPTER SEVEN
In Nayung's house, Blade ate and drank, then slept peacefully for many hours.
He was awakened by
Nayung gently prodding him in the ribs with a toe.
"Wake up, Richard Blade," said the Zungan. "We must go before the Ulungas as
soon as possible, in

case King Afuno arrives today. Without the blessing of the Ulungas, a warrior
cannot go before the king."
Blade nearly suggested that the Ulungas could go to the devil and take anybody
who bowed to them along, but controlled himself in time. When inRome, he
thought, even if ignoring local customs hadn't been so dangerous. He recalled
those gutted bodies swinging from poles. And this would be as good a chance as
any to size up the Ulungas, who seemed to have this whole nation of warriors
more or less under their thumbs. Always know your enemy-and he was almost
certain the Ulungas were going to turn out to be an enemy. If the Ulungas were
not, Chamba in any case certainly was, and it would be well to get the
Ulungas' blessing before he locked horns with Chamba.
Custom required that one go before the Ulungas without either food or drink,
so it was with dry throats and empty stomachs that Blade and Nayung left the

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house. Blade wore one of the leather loincloths, sandals, and an improvised
turban to protect his head from the sun.
The House of the Ulungas was the most imposing building in all of Brona, with
a second story built of wood rising above the usual first floor of mud and
turf. The second floor was adorned with high gables and ornately carved
balconies as well. It represented a fantastic amount of effort, considering
that nearly all of the wood must have been hauled many miles across the plains
from the nearest stand of large timber.
The entrance to the house was framed in particularly intricate carvings, some
unmistakably gilded, others set with semi-precious stones, uncut but dazzling.
Outside the entrance stood twelve warriors in two lines as rigid and perfect
as the formation of the guards atBuckinghamPalace. All of them had black
feathers decorating their spears, and delicate figures of clouds and birds
painted on the spearheads.
They raised their spears into the air and slammed the butts down on the hard
earth as Nayung approached. He strode forward, made the Peace Hand, and said,
"I bring the warrior Richard Blade of the English before the Ulungas." The
twelve nodded, raised their spears again, and formed an arch with them. Nayung
motioned Blade forward.
They had just stepped into the smoky gloom inside the entrance when the inner
door opened and
Chamba came out, followed by a second warrior of the hunting party. Nayung and
Blade could not keep from shooting sharp looks at Chamba. He made the Peace
Hand to them, but there was an unmistakably triumphant grin on his face and on
that of his companion. Without speaking, they passed on out into the sunlight.
As the outer door closed behind Chamba, Blade turned to Nayung, his face
sober. Before he could speak, a dim yellow light broke the darkness of the
chamber. A moment later a thundering voice also came down at them from the
ceiling.
"Who are you?"
"I am Nayung of Brona, D'bor and sworn hunter. I come before the Ulungas."
"Who is the man with you?"
Blade spoke up. "I am Richard Blade, a warrior of the English. I encountered
the D'bor Nayung and his fellow hunters in the forest during their hunt for
the Ivory People, and-"
"This is known," broke in the voice. There was a long silence. Blade fancied
his ears caught the sound of distant whispers and the stamping of feet, as the
Speakers for the Ulungas frantically tried to remember

their next lines.
"This is known,", the voice repeated. "Nayung, you come before the Ulungas to
be relieved of your hunter's oath. And you bring this man Richard Blade of the
English with you, that he may be seen by the
Ulungas. You wish that he may be judged fit to go before the king."
There was another silence, in which the voice appeared to be waiting for an
answer. Finally Nayung gave it. "That is all true."
Apparently that was a cue for the speakers. "You may not come before the
Ulungas, Richard Blade. It is not good that one who does not understand the
laws of the Zungans as the Sky Father has given them be made fit to come
before the king. This shall not be.
"Nayung, you shall not come before the Ulungas for one half-moon of time. You
are bidden not to leave
Brona. You shall spend four hours of each day in meditating on your evil in
bringing before the Ulungas such a man as Blade."
Blade could see that Nayung's face was twisted with surprise and the
beginnings of anger. But an outburst of anger now would do nothing except make
matters worse. Blade clamped a hand down hard on Nayung's shoulder. He himself
bowed his head submissively, in case anybody was looking at them through a
peephole. Then he spoke.

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"We submit to the decision of the Ulungas speaking as the voice of the Sky
Father. But they have not said what I, Richard Blade, am to do if I cannot
come before the king. Am I to go forth into the plains like once of the beasts
of your herds, to live or die there as the Sky Father wills it?"
Blade's tone and words must have come as a surprise to the listening
spokesmen, because there was another silence, even longer than the first one.
Then the voice came again, more quietly than before.
"Richard Blade, you shall live in Brona for the time of six full moons. You
shall do only women's work during that time, as it seems to please you so
much. You may not raise your hand to any warrior of
Zunga, nor speak to him without being spoken to first. At the beginning of the
seventh moon, if you show that you understand the laws of the Zungans as the
Sky Father has given them, you shall then come before the Ulungas."
"It shall be so. I submit to the judgment of the Ulungas," said Blade. Quickly
he turned and headed for the outer door, practically dragging Nayung after
him. He did not breathe freely until they were out in the sun again, and he
did not speak until they were well outside the Ulungas' compound and hopefully
out of earshot of anyone connected with it. Then he turned to Nayung.
"What do we do now, my friend?"
Nayung's face was still working with astonishment, frustration, and rage. It
was a minute or so before he managed to answer. Finally he clenched his fists
and said quietly, "The Ulungas have become involved in a game Chamba is
playing. I did not think that they could stoop so low."
Blade refrained from putting in his own opinion. In his experience political
priesthoods could indeed stoop that low, or even lower. Instead he only
shrugged and said, "I think you are right. They-or
Chamba-do not want us to go before King Afuno for a very long time. Why does
Chamba want to do this? Surely he cannot wish that the Zungans remain ignorant
of the fighting arts that I could teach them?"
He did not add that he suspected the Ulungas themselves did not want that. The
notion that the official priests of his people would endanger that people to
preserve "the laws as given by the Sky Father" would

be too much for Nayung to accept.
Nayung appeared to be having trouble deciding whether or not to speak. Finally
he said, "Blade, I think you must be told some things even I would rather you
did not know."
Blade hastily raised a hand. "Do not endanger yourself by telling me these
things, please. It would not be worth it for you."
Nayung shook his head angrily. "Blade, if I do not tell you, the whole people
of Zunga will be in danger!
You are a wise man as well as a warrior. Perhaps you can help me if you know
what the dangers are.
But what I am going to tell you is about divisions among the Zungans, so you
must swear that you will never use it to endanger our people: If you swear,
and then break your oath, I will kill you myself, and I
will feed your guts to the pigs."
Blade nodded. "Nayung, by the Sky Father, lawgiver to the Zungans, and by the
god of the English, I
swear that what you tell me now will never pass my lips to the harm of the
Zungans. If I break my oath, may the spirits of my body depart at once, and
may my whole, entire body be fed to the pigs of the people I have betrayed."
Nayung heaved a sigh. "That is good. Although still, I trust you in part
because I have no choice.
However..." He shook himself all over like a dog shaking itself after a bath:
Some of the strain and anger left his face. Then he drew Blade aside into a
niche in the wall of a dark, narrow alley between two huts, and told him in
brief the situation of the Zungans.
There were two factions among them. The more conservative wished to keep

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everything-laws, rites, beliefs, even methods of slaughtering cattle or
fighting-as it had always been. This side had the support of the Ulungas,
which gave them a great advantage. Anybody who disagreed with them was likely
to find that he could not go before the Ulungas and was thus an outcast for
the time being. Those who balked and protested at this frequently wound up
dead. Punished by the Sky Father, the Ulungas would say. But
Nayung was certain that most of these deaths were the work of agents of the
Ulungas--such as Chamba.
So much for the narrow-minded Zungans. The more open-minded ones believed that
the customs of the
Zungans should be changed if it were necessary to keep the people alive. They
were particularly interested in new ways of fighting, to make it possible to
defeat the slave raiders of Kanda and Rulam.
They even thought that perhaps the Ulungas could not properly speak for the
Sky Father any more. If he was the guardian of the Zungans, would he permit
them or require them to continue along the old ways to their doom? But very
few were bold enough to say this last out loud. Those who did usually died
sooner or later from the "wrath of the Sky Father," as the Ulungas put it.
What kept the two factions from coming to open civil warfare was the influence
of the king. King Afuno had reigned forty years with the respect and often the
love of all the Zungans. He had been a mighty warrior in his youth and was now
a wise statesman and judge in his old age. Except for the Ulungas, there were
few Zungans who would go against his wishes.
But even Afuno could not go against the Ulungas. Too many of the ordinary
warriors and the women took every claim of the Ulungas seriously, and would
fight to preserve the priests' authority. For King
Afuno to go openly against the Ulungas would also mean civil war in Zunga.
But now that Prince Makuluno was dead, King Afuno had a new problem. Makuluno
had been his last surviving son, and Afuno was perhaps too old to beget
another. He was certainly too old to live until his son was of a warrior's
age. In such a case it was in the Zungan custom to pick the best and wisest

warrior among the Zungans and marry him to the eldest daughter of the king.
They would rule jointly during their lifetimes, and afterward their eldest son
would rule as sole king. Thus did the royal house keep its line alive and its
hand upon the Zungans.
Over the course of time Chamba had come to be a candidate of the conservatives
for the hand of
Princess Aumara, Afuno's eldest daughter. Though he was only a M'nor, a leader
of thirty-six, he was an immensely strong and fast fighter. Wisdom he
obviously lacked, but ambition filled him. That made him a ready tool for the
Ulungas and the others who would rather see the Zungans die as a people than
see their customs change.
The more progressive faction had no single candidate, unfortunately. There
were too many able and ambitious warriors among it. All of them saw not only
the beauty of Princess Aumara and a chance to sit on the throne of Zunga, but
also saw a chance to settle many years' accumulated scores with the Ulungas.
So they fought each other almost as bitterly as they fought the Ulungas.
Nayung was one of the strongest of the candidates. He was a D'bor and likely
to become a Great D'bor
(a commander over a force of 1296 men) very soon. He was as skilled in single
combat as he was wise as a commander against the slave raiders. He was young
enough that he would probably live until at least one of his sons was grown.
And he was known to hold the Ulungas in sufficient respect so that the
conservatives might not make a great uproar if he became king and consort.
But now Nayung by order of the Ulungas could not approach Afuno. If he tried,
he would be going against the will of the Sky Father. His whole reputation for
moderation would go up in smoke in an instant. His life would follow shortly,
if, past events were any clue. And if the Ulungas were sufficiently determined

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to have a king of their faction, they might find ways of keeping all the other
progressive candidates from approaching Afuno. They might end up leaving the
field open to Chamba or some other man they supported. The Ulungas saw their
power threatened, and they would do anything to hold onto it.
Blade considered Nayung's words in silence for a minute, and then for another
minute. Nayung leaned against the wall and seemed to be calm. Only the
twitching of a nerve above his left eye betrayed the strain. Finally Blade
sighed and said, "Well, we cannot let the Ulungas play with the succession
this way.
That would be a betrayal of Zunga. So we must go before King Afuno whether the
Ulungas approve it or not."
CHAPTER EIGHT
If Blade had suddenly sprouted a second head with long, flowing purple hair,
Nayung could not have looked at him with more shock and surprise. The Zungan's
mouth opened and shut several times like that of a dying fish before he said:
"That is sacrilege."
Blade shook his head. "Nayung, consider. Who respects the Ulungas most? A man
who bribes them to give judgments to advance his political plans? Or one who
respects them in all things until they put the whole people of Zunga in
danger? In fact, can the Ulungas even be respecting themselves if they play
with the future of the Zungans in this way? If the Zungans are the protected
and beloved of the Sky
Father, is it not the greatest sacrilege of all to endanger their future?
Nayung, perhaps going before Afuno without the permission of the Ulungas is
sacrilege. But it is not the greatest sacrilege, nor is it the first.
Sacrilege already swarms around the Zungans like carrion birds around a dead
animal."

Nayung's face had remained frozen in its first astonishment while Blade
talked. When Blade fell silent, Nayung still showed no change of expression
for a moment. Then with an almost imperceptible jerk of his head, he said,
"Yes, I suppose you are right. The Sky Father must understand what we do, if
he protects the Zungans as the Ulungas themselves say he does. But how are we
to do this thing without being instantly killed? The Ulungas will not wait for
the Sky Father to take vengeance for this. Their guards will attack us at
once, the moment we step toward the king."
Blade slammed a clenched fist down into his palm.. "That is exactly what I
want! Do the guards ever throw their spears?"
Again Nayung looked shocked. "To throw a spear is contrary to the laws given
by the Sky Father.
Except for the king," he added.
"No doubt," said Blade. "And I suppose the Ulungas' guards have to be
particularly careful to obey the laws. Besides, those spears are not very good
for throwing as they are now. In a few days I could show you how to make
something so much better!"
"Blade," said Nayung. "We were talking of approaching the king. Why do you
want the guards to attack us?"
"I should have said, attack me. Remember, I took six of you without a scratch
there in the forest. And I
wasn't using a spear."
"Just that stick."
"Just that stick," said Blade, nodding. "With a spear, I think I can hold off
just about any number of the
Ulungas' guards until the king notices me."
Nayung laughed. "Blade, if you start a fight in the royal circle or anywhere
near it, King Afuno will notice it about one breath after it begins. He may
even climb down from the throne platform and take a hand in the fight if his
daughters will let him."
"Do his daughters have that much influence over him?" asked Blade.

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Nayung's smile broadened. "Ah, Blade, I see where that thought is taking you.
I do not blame you. If they were not royal, all five of Afuno's daughters
would have been wed years ago. Even the youngest is beautiful, and Aumara is
the most beautiful of the five. Half the warriors in Zunga would take such a
woman with no bride price at all. But Afuno will never consider giving Aumara
to a warrior not of the
Zungans, even if he does not commit 'sacrilege' before the king's very eyes.
Think of some other women of the Zungans."
"You think of your plan," said Blade rather testily. "Even if I were
interested in being King of Zunga I
would still have to survive our little demonstration for Afuno." He hoped
Nayung was convinced by this.
If Nayung got to suspecting that Blade was aiming at the Zungan throne, he
would be much less willing to cooperate in Blade's plans. And Blade needed the
Zungan's cooperation for quite a while to come.
As if he had read the last part of Blade's thoughts, Nayung asked, "Blade,
while you are fighting the guards and risking your life, what am I doing? Do I
simply stand about like a carved wooden image of the Sky Father in the House
of the Ulungas? It will not be to my honor to let a friend risk his life for
me when I am doing nothing."

"Don't worry," said Blade. "When I start fighting with the guards, you step
forward until you can easily be seen and heard by Afuno. Then you explain to
him who I am, what I am doing, and what I can do for the Zungans. Choose the
most convincing words, and shout them out loud and clear so everybody can hear
you."
Nayung nodded. "I understand, Blade. It is a good idea. But why do you insist
on doing this fighting with the Ulungas' guards? Why do you not just let me
call out to Afuno, and hear his answer before you act?"
"You do not quite understand, Nayung. If you go up to the royal circle and
shout at Afuno, the spokesmen for the Ulungas will simply point out that you
are a man forbidden to approach the king. The guards may kill you on the spot
for that. They will certainly seize you and rush you away before you can
speak. Almost nobody will remember the incident. Those who do will be told by
the Ulungas that it is against the laws of the Zungans to talk about a case of
sacrilege. Afuno will never get a chance to see what I can do, nor will
anybody else.
"But if I fight with the guards, I will show Afuno and his daughters and many
hundreds of Zungans what I
can do. What the English fighting arts can do. The Ulungas will not be able to
tell that many people to ignore or forget what they have seen. If the Ulungas
even try, they will show that they have more regard for the ancient laws and
their own power than they do for the future of the Zungans. I think your
people are not the kind to take that very well."
Nayung shook his head.
"Besides," Blade concluded, "there is honor among the warriors of the English
also. It is much like that of the Zungans. I cannot let a friend go into
danger to help me while I stand in safety outside the fight, any more than you
can." He stuck out his hand to Nayung, and after a moment's hesitation the
warrior took it.
They now decided to return to Nayung's house, break their fast, and finish
working out the details of their plan. They were just turning into the lane
that led to the compound of the D'bors when the roar of at least a dozen iron
gongs being savagely beaten came booming over the roofs and walls. Nayung
started and stopped dead.
"The assembly call to the people!"
"What does it mean?"
"Mean?" Nayung looked at Blade in astonishment, and also in more than a little
fear. "It means that all the people of Brona are to assemble in the great open

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field. King Afuno is arriving right now!"
Blade threw up his hands in mock despair and said, "The Sky Father seems to
want to play jokes on us today. Well, we know most of what we need to do: Tell
me, quickly, about these assemblies."
Nayung's words raced off his tongue. "The king, the princesses, and certain
advisers stand or sit inside the royal circle. Outside that circle is a ring
of the Royal Guards. Outside the Royal Guards is another circle, the Ulungas'
circle, where the Speakers for the Ulungas stand. Outside the speakers are the
Ulungas' guards."
"Is there room to fight in the Ulungas' circle?"
Nayung nodded.

"All right, then. I'll only plan on getting through the Ulungas' guards. Then
I'll do my fighting in the
Ulungas' circle. You get in close enough to the Ulungas' guards so that you
can be sure the king will hear you when you shout. But don't get too close.
The Ulungas' guards will probably know what the Ulungas have said to you. One
more thing-will the Royal Guards join in the fight?"
"Not unless you look dangerous to the king."
"You should be able to convince King Afuno that I'm not a danger to him, only
to the enemies of the
Zungans. If not-well, we must leave the Sky Father with something to do, and
not plan everything ourselves."
"Blade, I think sometimes that you are mad, to talk as you do of the Sky
Father and the Ulungas. Or else you are a spirit of the Sky Father given the
form of a man and sent down to help the Zungans. I wish
I knew which."
Blade slapped Nayung on the shoulder. "Neither, my friend. Only a warrior who
has traveled farther and seen more than most Zungans. But this is no time for
talking. Let's go."
Blade's feet kept itching to break into a run as they headed down the lane
toward the assembly field. But he knew nothing would be more certain to
attract attention. Besides, the crowd of people heading for the field would
have made running almost impossible in any case. Warriors, women and children,
even household slaves-everybody was on the move.
Many hundreds of people had already crowded toward the circle by the time
Blade and Nayung reached it. But the two men were able to slip to within a few
yards of the Ulungas' guards. There were about a hundred of these, stationed
in pairs at six-foot intervals around the outside of their circle. Of each
pair, one stood facing outward toward the crowd, one inward toward the
Ulungas' circle.
The sun was now well up in the sky and beating savagely down on the open
field. Blade was glad he was wearing his turban, in spite of the curious and
sometimes hostile looks it drew. But the turban could not keep out the smell
that was rising from hundreds of unwashed bodies as the sun worked on them.
For the moment Blade's empty stomach was holding its peace, but he wondered if
that would last as the crowd grew.
As more and more people came, a tremendous din of voices added itself to the
smells. Women's and children's voices almost entirely, though. The warriors
stood in the blazing sun like so many mahogany statues, the only words coming
from their sections of the crowd were the barks of orders.
Suddenly, the iron gongs sounded again. This time in a definite four-beat
pattern. As the heavy metallic sounds rolled out across the field, the
warriors took up the rhythm, stamping their feet, shaking their spears in the
air, and shouting, "Hi! Ho! Ya! Ha!" in time to the gongs. The noise swelled
to a deafening roar that tore at Blade's ears and made him seriously consider
putting his hands over them. Beside him, Nayung was chanting and stamping with
the best of them, and Blade finally decided he should join in.
He had just done so when a new noise cut through the uproar-the deep bray of a

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horn. In a second the gongs stopped and the chanting died away. In the next
second someone in the section of warriors to
Blade's right shouted an order. Every one of the hundreds of warriors in the
section did a perfect simultaneous about-face. Then another order sounded, and
they stepped forward, again moving as one man. In perfect order and formation
the whole section marched out of the crowd into the open field, dressing its
lines and keeping step as it did so with no apparent effort.

Now a solid wall of warriors three ranks deep came marching across the field
toward the crowd, led by half a dozen men blowing the long horns Blade had
heard. Behind the warriors appeared six large, carved wooden chairs, each
apparently floating along in midair several feet above the ground. As the
whole group approached, Blade saw that each chair was mounted on a platform
borne by four of the
Zungan cattle. In five of the chairs sat young women-one in fact was only a
girl-but in the lead chair sat a man. Blade hardly needed Nayung's whispers to
know this was King Afuno. Nor did he wait to go down on his knees when
everyone around him started doing so, Fortunately there seemed to be no taboo
about looking at the king. Blade examined the man carefully as his chair
passed down the corridor left by the withdrawal of the section of warriors.
He might have been anywhere from fifty to seventy, but obviously he was still
in magnificent physical condition. He was nearly as tall as Blade's six-feet
plus, and every bit as muscular. He wore a loincloth of solid blue, worked
with bright red figures, and held a spear in each hand. One spear had a red
shaft, one a black, and both had gilded heads. That was all Blade could see
before the king passed into the royal circle and for the moment out of Blade's
field of vision.
Behind the king came the five chairs with the princesses. As the first one
moved past, Nayung nudged
Blade and whispered, "Aumara." But Blade would have known the princess without
Nayung's prompting.
She sat straight and proud in the chair, head slightly raised by the massive
golden collar around her neck.
That collar and a red loincloth were her only garments. Even seen in profile,
the straight-back, the high, full breasts, and the flawlessly curved legs were
unmistakable-and exciting. As the other four princesses were carried past,
Blade could not deny that Aumara was first in beauty as well as in place.
The last of the princesses vanished into the circle. Three barked orders
sounded in the silence. There was a stamping of feet and a clattering of
spears as the Royal Guards took up their positions around the royal family,
then silence again. The king had arrived.
Again Nayung nudged Blade, and whispered in his ear.
"Are you ready, Blade?"
"Ready? Now? Why?"
"You said we wanted to get much attention. We will get the most attention now,
before the king speaks.
And we should move before the warriors come back into that space," he said,
pointing off to the right.
Blade nodded. The Zungan was right on all points. Was there any reason besides
his own nerves to delay? He could think of none. He took one, two, three slow
steps to the right, until there was only one row of people separating him from
the open space. Several of the people turned to look at him and
Nayung, with open hostility on their faces. Then in a single motion he pushed
through the row and dashed down the open lane toward the Ulungas' guards.
CHAPTER NINE
Blade was gambling that surprise and speed would bring him in among the guards
before they could react. So he made no sound, and rushed straight down the
open lane as fast as his feet could carry him across the hard ground. His
spear rode on one shoulder, out of the way for now but firmly gripped in his

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right hand and ready to be swung down and into action in a second.
The Ulungas' guards did not wait long to react to this huge pale-skinned
warrior rushing at them. But even that little delay was too long. Their spears
were only just coming up into fighting position when

Blade reached them.
His own spear whistled down off his shoulder and then whirled up again,
gripped in both hands. It came up under the shaft of the first guard's spear
with a sharp bang. The other's spear flew straight up into the air. Blade
slammed the spear butt down onto the man's shoulder before he could do
anything else to respond.
Blade was trying to pull his blows and avoid killing any of his opponents,
which put him at a disadvantage. A pulled punch or blow had to go in more
slowly, possibly too slowly, but he had to take the risk. A wholesale
slaughter of the Ulungas' guards would make it impossible for King Afuno to
give him a hearing. The defeat of a dozen or more without killing, on the
other hand...
But the second man of the first pair was now coming at him, spear held with
the point too far down for
Blade to get in under it. So Blade quickly reversed his spear and stabbed at
the man's thigh. Spearheads met with a clang. Then Blade's spear butt crashed
down on the man's head. He dropped in his tracks.
Blade leaped high over the fallen body, deliberately making the leap as
spectacular as possible. He went a good five feet into the air and came down
well inside the Ulungas' circle, with four guards rushing him.
The first pair seemed to be tyros. They came in both together, spears held in
a strictly conventional position. Blade's own shaft whirled like a windmill,
and both spears went flying. The two men backed away as Blade threatened them
with his point, then turned to meet the other pair. He decided it was time to
show off a low-line thrust with the spear, and did so. A lightning jab, and
the spear point grated on one man's thighbone. Then Blade whipped the heavy
point up at top speed. Already red with blood, the point sank into the second
man's upper arm.
Two more guards came at him, with a new variation in their stance. Their
spears were held extra high, almost level. Blade decided to make that
improvised variation look as ridiculous as it actually was. As they came at
him, he did a forward roll, going completely over in a split second and coming
up with his spear held crossways. With all the power of his arms and the speed
and weight of his body behind it, his spear slammed across the stomachs of the
two men. They doubled up as though they had been kicked, all their breath
going out in a whooosh. As they toppled face down, Blade sprang up between
them, waving his spear over his head in both hands, yelling and shouting
joyfully. What he said made no sense.
It wasn't supposed to make sense. It was all for effect for effect, and to
call Nayung.
Instead of Nayung, he saw yet another pair of guards coming at him. No, it was
the second pair he had disarmed. They had retrieved their spears and were
coming at him in the attack Nayung and his last companion had used in the
forest.
But they lacked Nayung's skill. The man covering his partner moved in so close
he got in the way of the other's swing. The first man had to check his swing,
and while the two were sorting themselves out, Blade moved in. In a deliberate
display of sheer strength, he swung his spear one-handed like a club, smashing
down across the first man's lowered spear. Blade's spearhead rose up the other
man's spearshaft and slashed a bloody furrow across his stomach. Before the
first victim could even step back, Blade swung his spear up again, shifted
hands, and thrust single-handed at him. He was deliberately aiming high, and
his thrust went straight to its target. The man gasped as Blade's spearhead
tore open his left ear, and jumped back. From first to last the whole sequence

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had taken perhaps ten seconds.
It certainly made an impression, not only on the crowd but on the other
guards. Gasps of amazement and awe rose all around Blade. The next two pairs
of guards that had been rushing forward to the attack stopped where they were
and fanned out into a circle around Blade. He whirled, reversing his spear as
he turned, and drove the butt hard at the man behind him. For once, the
intended target jumped back in

time to escape being hit. All four of the men in the circle took a few more
steps backward, holding their spears ready to guard against any more
surprises.
Before Blade or his opponents could make another move, there was a flurry in
the crowd. Voices rose in angry protest, spearheads clanged together, and then
Nayung burst out into the open. He dashed toward the guards that had closed
the Ulungas' circle behind Blade, but stopped just outside spear range.
Then he raised his spear high over head in salute to King Afuno, threw back
his head, and roared out his message.
"Oh, King, see the great warrior of the English and how he makes the best
warriors of the Zungans fall over themselves like children playing in the
dust. He has sworn before the Sky Father that he can teach each Zungan to
fight as he does. The iron swords and the iron clothing of the slave raiders
will no longer protect them. They will all hang from posts around our victory
fires. Our wives and children will not be their slaves, but theirs will be
ours. Let this warrior Blade speak to you, oh, King!"
While Nayung was shouting his message, Blade was doing his best to watch the
four guards circling around him and King Afuno on his chair. Afuno held on to
both of his spears, but lowered the one he had raised into throwing position.
Otherwise he neither moved nor spoke during Nayung's entire speech.
Once it seemed to Blade that the massive head jerked in surprise, but that
might have only been his imagination.
Blade braced himself as Nayung came to the end of his speech. Had Afuno,
understood their message?
And even if he had, would he dare to encourage two men who were under the ban
of the Ulungas? If the answer was no to either question, Blade knew that he
and Nayung had only minutes at most to live.
Perhaps less, if Afuno took it into his head to use his royal privileges and
hurl those spears.
The minutes dragged on. The sun seemed hotter than ever, or was it just the
strain? Blade knew that sweat was pouring off him as though he were melting
away. Cautiously he reached up a hand to loosen a fold of the turban and wipe
his streaming forehead with it. Then he turned back toward Afuno.
The king still stood motionless on his platform. Then Blade saw Princess
Aumara get to her feet and spring lightly down from her platform. A moment
later she was climbing up beside her father and talking urgently into his ear.
Blade would have given a good deal to hear what she was saying.
Then Afuno turned back toward Blade and Nayung. He fixed the two men with a
stare that even fifty feet away made Blade swallow and brace himself for
action. Then in a clear, high-pitched voice he hailed them.
"D'bor Nayung, Richard Blade of the English, come into the king's circle."
Blade's own whistling sigh of relief was lost in the gasps and murmurs of
astonishment from the thousands of onlookers. For a moment he could not have
said a word if he had had to. He could only turn to Nayung and see his own
grin mirrored on the other's face. Nayung stretched out his hand toward
Blade, Blade took it, and both turned toward the king's circle.
Before, they could take a single step, a voice roared out from the other side
of the circles:
"Wait, oh, King!"
The voice was shrill with rage, but it was unmistakably Chamba's. Blade's grip
on his spear tightened.

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Chamba went on. "Oh, great Afuno, shall you defy the Sky Father? These men
were forbidden by the

Ulungas to approach your person. The Ulungas have spoken!"
Again Blade tensed, waiting for Afuno's answer. If the king said, "Then, so be
it," or some other words of submission, Blade and Nayung would once again be
facing a quick death.
Afuno's voice was calm at first. "Blade has shown himself a warrior who indeed
may teach us much. If there is a wrongness in letting them approach me against
the will of the Ulungas, let the wrath of the Sky
Father fall on my head. Do not attempt to teach me how to be a king, Chamba."
Then Afuno's voice rose to an angry roar. "And by what right do you speak for
the Ulungas, Chamba? Are their speakers all mute, that I do not hear their
voices? Or are you lying? Oh, Speakers of the Ulungas, I am waiting for your
answer." There was no mistaking the sarcasm in Afuno's voice.
Nor was there any mistaking the silence that followed Afuno's question. Blade
did not know which of the unarmed men in the Ulungas' circle might be
speakers, but he did know that none of them were saying anything. The silence
went on and on, and a triumphant grin spread across Nayung's face. He motioned
Blade forward.
They had taken only one step when Chamba's voice rose again from the other
side of the circles. Now it was shrill with half-hysterical rage, in spite of
its words. "Oh, Sky Father, bless me in slaying these blasphemers, and when
they are dead turn your curse away from the Zungans!" Even in his rage, Chamba
did not quite dare call down a curse on King Afuno. Blade and Nayung looked at
each other, then nodded and moved a few steps apart. As they raised their
spears, Chamba burst through the guards into the Ulungas' circle and sprinted
around it toward the waiting men. A few steps behind him ran a second warrior.
Whether the Ulungas' guards would have intervened or not, they had no time to
do so. Chamba and his companion came down at Blade and Nayung at a dead run,
spears raised but dancing and darting back and forth. Blade made a movement to
jump backward, but Nayung shook his head sharply.
"It is against a warrior's honor to retreat."
Blade opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again. This was no time to
argue. Besides, if he wanted to impress the Zungans, he would have to win
according to their rules, regardless of what his training and instincts told
him. This wasn't the first time he had played this sort of game. So he nodded
to Nayung, and both moved forward to meet their opponents.
Crude technique or not, Chamba at full speed was a deadly opponent. And he was
strong. His first downthrust nearly drove all the way into Blade's chest. It
took all the strength of Blade's arms to hold
Chamba off. And as the man pulled his spear back, he hooked the head over the
shaft of Blade's spear and nearly jerked it out of his hands. Blade lurched
forward, for a moment nearly off balance. He had to jump desperately sideways
to avoid another thrust at his stomach, and twist his head to avoid a third at
his face. Then he was able to bring his own spear back up and whip the point
around into a lunge at
Chamba's thigh. The warrior sprang sideways also, but not far enough or fast
enough. The point scraped his skin just below the loincloth, leaving a thin
oozing red line.
The slight wound made no difference to Chamba's speed or determination. He
came in again, and Blade had to move fast to slam his own spear down against
the shaft of Chamba's spear and force the incoming point down. The point
almost went into the ground, and Blade quickly whipped his spear butt up and
over at Chamba's head. Again a sideways leap took Chamba clear almost
unscathed-the spear butt just grazed his cheek.

So it went on, an endless sequence of thrusts, parries, and ripostes. Each

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fighter was using every possible and impossible variation of his fighting
style. Each was using every bit of his speed, strength, and skill. Blade soon
knew that Chamba, fighting all out, was as fast as he was. Blade knew he had
more endurance, and was probably stronger. But in a fight where one lucky
stroke could end it, would he last long enough for these to make a difference?
And how was Nayung doing? He dared not take his attention off Chamba even for
a split-second glance at his companion's duel with Chamba's second.
If Chamba had been willing to retreat occasionally, he could have kept the
fight going until he or Blade or both of them dropped flat on the ground from
exhaustion. As it was, his honor would not permit him to give back a single
step. He always stayed within range of Blade. Because he was always within
range, Blade's superior strength and endurance finally began to tell.
Blade was focusing so completely on the next sequence of blows that it was a
little while before he realized this. He saw one of his thrusts go home a few
inches below the now-clotted blood from the first wound, just above Chamba's
right knee. A thrust with the butt at Chamba's jaw missed, but glanced along
the man's temple. Blade felt the jar along the spear shaft. Chamba shook his
head, and stood still for a moment before coming in again. Since the fight
began, this was the first pause in Chamba's steady, machinelike offensive.
But it was not the last. The pauses began to come more and more frequently.
Each time Chamba kept his spear up, and each time Blade attacked, he defended
solidly. But it seemed to Blade that each parry or guard came a little more
slowly than the one before. If anybody got home a lucky stroke now, it would
be Blade, not Chamba. He told himself not to let hope make him careless about
a man who was still dangerous, and moved in again.
The world had shrunk now to Chamba, the bare hard earth between them, and his
own blood pounding in his ears. Suddenly something new broke in on his mind-a
gasping scream, and the solid sound of metal striking bone. Chamba whirled to
stare, and so did Blade.
Nayung's opponent was standing motionless, his spear raised and just about to
descend. Nayung appeared to be crouching motionless, a sitting target for his
opponent's downstrokes. Then Blade saw that Nayung's spear angled up toward
his opponent's chest. The head of the spear was buried almost out of sight
between the man's ribs, and a thin rim of blood showed around it. After what
seemed an incredibly long time, the dying man dropped his spear. Both hands
went down to the spear driven into his body, as if he wanted to wrench it out
of him. Then he gasped again and fell forward, so that Nayung's spear drove
deep into him, then came out through his back.
Before Nayung could make a single move to jerk his spear free, Chamba struck.
He leaped sideways from in front of Blade and came down in a crouch within
easy reach of his companion's fallen spear. He snatched it up and raised it to
the attack position. Nayung began sidling around to the right, motioning
Blade to do the same in the opposite direction. Blade nodded, but kept his
eyes fixed on Chamba. The man's eyes were wide, staring, and bloodshot; his
breath came in bellows-like wheezes. He seemed to be nerving himself for
something.
Then his spear rose, sun flashing from the head, and his right arm snapped
forward. The spear hurled free through the air. Before Blade could realize
what Chamba had done, the thrown spear plunged deep into Nayung's thigh.
Blade did not need the howl of rage and horror that rose up deafeningly all
around him to tell him that
Chamba had made a fatal error. He saw King Afuno stiffen as though he himself
had been struck, then raise one of his own spears, ready to hurl it into
Chamba.

Somehow Blade managed to raise his voice enough so that Afuno realized he was
trying to say something. The king's bull-like roar beat through the shouting
of the crowd. As the yells and curses subsided, Blade raised his spear and
shouted at the top of his voice.

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"The Sky Father has spoken. He who would seek to deny my teachings to the
Zungans has revealed himself a mad blasphemer. He was thrown a spear and
wounded my comrade, the D'bor Nayung. Oh, King, let me teach the Zungans first
of all how I honor their laws. Let me slay thus blasphemer with my own hands!"
Even King Afuno could not make himself heard over the roar that went up at
these words. Cheers now mingled with the curses, and Blade heard his name from
a thousand throats. He looked to where Nayung lay. Four of the Royal Guards
were already standing around him, examining his wound, preparing to pull the
spear out. Nayung was as well off as he could be for now. It was time to
settle with Chamba.
The man was desperate, and Blade knew that a desperate man was the most
dangerous opponent possible. But Chamba had lost too much speed and strength.
No matter how furiously he attacked, Blade's defenses held. For a few minutes
Blade stayed firmly on the defensive, judging Chamba's speed to the split
second.
Then he moved in for the kill. The golden sunlight danced in a dazzling
pattern as his spearhead bobbed and weaved, up and down, in and out. Bloody
slashes and punctures appeared on Chamba's arms, legs, stomach, cheeks. Blood
from a cut in his scalp ran down toward one eye. Blade stepped back and let
Chamba wipe it off without stopping his spear's movements. Then he moved in
again.
A feint with the point at Chamba's throat. The man's spear swung sideways to
block it. Blade quickly reversed his spear, bringing the butt down across
Chamba's right hand. He felt bone crack, saw the hand open limply and Chamba's
spear dip. He swung his own spear down and then sideways like a club.
Chamba's spear flew out of his left hand and landed twenty feet away.
Before Chamba could recover from the shock, Blade rammed his own spear point
down into the ground. Then he leaped forward, one leg snapping out in a flying
kick. The foot drove into Chamba's stomach. He rose completely clear of the
ground, folding up in midair like a snapped twig. He was still doubled up when
he hit the ground. Blade was on top of Chamba in a second. Three rapid chops
with the edge of his hand-to the throat, to the temple, to the back of the
neck-and Chamba lay still.
Again deafening cheering pounded at Blade's ears as he lurched to his feet and
retrieved his spear. He turned toward King Afuno and raised it in salute, but
made no effort to speak. The explosion of a bomb would have been lost in the
uproar.
He waited until the crowd ran out of either enthusiasm or breath, then shouted
across to Afuno. "Hail, oh, King. I have done as I had promised. With my own
hands I have slain the blasphemer. This is my first lesson to the Zungans and
my first offering to the Sky Father."
More cheering, but not so loud or so prolonged this time. The crowd was
obviously running down.
Considering how long they had been standing in the hot sun, this was hardly
surprising. Blade knew that his own head was beginning to swim from the heat
and the fight. If he had to stand out here much longer, he was going to give
the crowd another bit of entertainment by fading flat on his face.
He managed to raise his voice again. "Oh, King, my companion and friend Nayung
is badly wounded.
May I see him taken safely to his house and then return to approach you?"

Afuno nodded. "It is my wish that you go with Nayung, and my own doctor shall
come to care for both of you. It is my wish also that you remain in the house
of Nayung until I myself come. That will be after the death rites of my son.
Then we shall speak of your fighting arts and of what you may teach the
Zungans." The king's face was expressionless. But even at this distance, there
was no mistaking the interest and curiosity on Princess Aumara's face.
CHAPTER TEN
Afuno came to Nayung's house that night, heralded by another blare of horns.

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This did not wake
Nayung, who was sleeping peacefully. To Blade's relief, the doctor had
pronounced Nayung in no danger. He would merely have to stay off his leg for a
few weeks in order to ensure that it healed properly.
Once out of the public eye, Afuno seemed to have a great dislike for royal
pomp and ceremony. He squatted down on the floor, drank thirstily from the
water jug, and fixed Blade with an unpleasantly searching stare.
"Well, Richard Blade of the English. Was Nayung telling the truth about you
when he broke up my assembly?"
Blade nodded.
"The whole truth?"
Blade had to shake his head. Afuno grinned, showing a full set of white teeth.
"I did not think so. But I
do not blame either of you. You had to get my attention and speak fast. If all
the people who come before me with petitions and requests were to follow that
rule, it would be easier to be a king. But now we are alone. Say all that you
need to say, and leave nothing out."
As far as he could, Blade did so. Afuno had the gift of listening well, rare
anywhere and still rarer in men of power. When he asked a question, it was
either to keep Blade moving, or to clarify some point he did not understand.
And he did not mind admitting that he did not understand. By the time Blade
had finished, he found it exceedingly easy to understand how King Afuno had
ruled the proud, martial
Zungans for forty years without dispute.
When Blade had finished, Afuno again fixed him with a painfully searching
stare. Then he nodded slowly and said, "It is well that you showed what you
could do. Otherwise I might find it hard to believe. But you were knocking
down the Ulungas' guards as though they were children. That was good to see,
and I
know many Zungans will feel the same. And what you did to Chamba!" The king
laughed fiercely. "That man had the kind of hot head that can only be cooled
down by cutting it off."
Then Afuno's face sobered. "Do not think that I am grateful to you for forcing
me to go against the will of the Ulungas. I know Chamba was telling the truth,
but fortunately few others did, and they kept their mouths shut. That was well
for them. But if the speakers had supported Chamba, it would have been
difficult for me to recognize you and Nayung. And then it would have gone hard
for you.
"However, the Ulungas may see that it would be wise to go on keeping their
mouths shut. If that is the case, our problems will be smaller."
Afuno rose. "In any case, Ulungas or not, I am going to take you and Nayung to
Dorkalu with me

tomorrow. There you will meet with the Great Mors and the On'ror who commands
all the warriors of
Zunga under me. The On'ror will pick good warriors to learn this new way of
fighting from you. Then each of the ones you have taught will teach more, and
so on. You are a gift from the Sky Father, and I
will not slap his face by wearing you out asking you to do all the teaching
yourself."
Blade smiled. "Your Majesty understands very well the way to train warriors in
a new way of fighting. It is what we do among the English also. But must
Nayung come now? He will not be able to walk."
"He can travel by litter. And you will need his advice about the laws and
customs of the Zungans. Listen to him, for he is a wise man as well as an
excellent warrior."
"That is the way I see him also."
"Then, so be it. We leave tomorrow at dawn." Afuno raised a massive hand in a
gesture that was part wave, part blessing, and strode out. Blade turned to

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Nayung and saw the Zungan warrior was awake and grinning broadly.
"We are off to a good start, Blade. But it is no more than that so far. And we
have also been very lucky."
"That we have."
Warriors of the Royal Guard routed them out of their sleep while it was still
dark the next morning, bringing food and beer and a litter for Nayung. They
were on the move before the sun had cleared the walls of Brona, and the sky
was still pink and gold as they crossed the field. The bodies of the slave
raiders still swung gently from their poles, but three new poles had been
added. The bodies swinging from these were Zungans. One body was headless.
Afuno saw the curiosity on Blade's face and grinned. "The one with no head is
Chamba. I would have fed his head to the pigs, but they would get little food
from it. There was not much in that skull of his. The other two are the
warriors who ran from you when you disarmed them. That was the act of a
coward, and there will be no cowards among the Zungans while I rule."
Blade nodded, his face expressionless. He did not object to any of the
punishments. But they were a sharp reminder of the harsh, bloody world in
which he had begun to make his way.
Outside the gates of Brona the royal caravan formed up. Four hundred warriors,
a hundred slaves, assorted free members of the royal household, and the royal
family itself. More than five hundred men and women in all, and more than a
hundred cattle. Some of these bore the platforms and litter, others carried
supplies and equipment, others were simply driven along to provide fresh meat.
The pace of the caravan was limited to the leisurely amble of the cattle.
Tired as he was, Blade found that frustratingly slow.
Though the caravan moved slowly, it started early and kept on all day, with
only one short break for water and food. The water came around in skin bags.
It was warm and tasted foul, but after hours of marching in the sun, Blade was
too thirsty to care. As he drank, he sensed somebody's eyes on him.
Spinning around, he saw Princess Aumara quickly turn her graceful head away
and go back to staring straight ahead. In the momentary glimpse he had of her
eyes, he saw they were wide, brown, and once again filled with an unmistakable
curiosity. But it was hard to believe this curiosity could lead to anything
here and now, out on the plain in the middle of the entire royal caravan.

The sun was dipping below the horizon before they reached the waterhole that
was their goal and campsite. By the light of torches the household slaves
pitched hide tents, laid out food, refilled the water bags, and lit fires. The
warriors refilled their water bottle's, gnawed pieces of dried meat, then
moved out into the darkness to form a wide protective circle around the camp.
There were eight tents-one for the king, one for each of his daughters, one
for Blade and Nayung, and one for the royal advisers. Everybody else would
sleep on the ground, under the stars. And soon everybody was asleep, except
for the warriors on guard and the slaves tending the fires.
Blade found that he could not sleep. Things were moving too fast for his mind
to adjust to them. He was rising among the Zungans-in fact, he was shooting up
like a skyrocket. And there was nothing to support his position except the
favor of Afuno, his own skills, and a great deal of luck. So far the luck had
been running his way. He hoped that it would continue.
Although he had been walking all day, he decided that perhaps a short walk
around the camp would relax him as much as anything could. Nayung was asleep,
and Blade did not disturb him as he slipped out of the tent and stepped out
into the flickering orange glow of the firelight.
He kept walking, feeling the breeze blow over his skin, blowing away some of
the tension. Out here the fire was reduced to an orange blotch on the dark
plain, dimly showing up the hunched forms of the tents around it. From over
nearer to the waterhole, the cattle stirred restlessly, and occasionally one
bawled loud and harsh. A half moon rode high in a sky filled with more stars
than Blade had ever seen before.

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How long he sat there he didn't know. In time he realized that the temperature
was dropping, and he thought of drifting back toward the warmth of the fire.
He started to rise. As he did so, he realized that someone was standing in
front of him, looking down at him.
He stood up, and found himself looking down at the figure. The face tilted
upward, and in the faint moonlight Blade saw two wide eyes shining up into
his. His jaw set hard. It was Princess Aumara.
The silence went on and on, those two eyes still gleaming upward. Finally
Blade heard a soft laugh, and
Aumara spoke. "What is it, Richard Blade of the English? Do you find my
company unpleasant?"
"No, Princess. Only surprising. Why are you wandering about outside your
tent?"
"Do the English keep their women locked up, like the Kandans?"
Blade was startled, and it showed in his voice. "No. Why do you ask?"
"If they do not, why are you surprised that I do not sit and stifle in my
tent? The air is so good and clean out here on the plain."
"It is. But aren't you afraid of being-bothered?" Blade could not think of a
more tactful word at the moment.
"Who would bother me?" asked Aumara. Not arrogantly, but simply asking a
question about a matter that she regarded as self-evident. "I am the First
Princess of Zunga. It is death to show disrespect to me.
And it would not even be necessary to wait for my father's guards and judgment
to bring that death." She reached up for the thong that held her robe together
at the waist, undid it, and did a little whirling step.
The robe lifted, showing a belt around her waist with two gleaming knives in
it. It also showed that she wore nothing else under her robe. Blade had a
fleeting glimpse of a trim waist and full round thighs

converging in a curly dark mass of hair in the center.
Blade jumped as if he had been stung. He had not exactly been afraid of this,
but he could see a hideous host of complications following in its wake. Aumara
noticed his reaction, and her eyes blazed into his again.
"Is there a problem, Richard Blade? Do you perhaps find me not desirable? No,
I see that is not the case, whatever you may say." She pointed down at Blade's
groin. He was entirely too aware that his manhood had risen. As usual it
obeyed no will but its own.
"My tongue will not lie to you, Princess. Why should it? You are a beautiful
woman. My mind and my manhood agree on that. But you are also a princess of
the Zungans. Suppose I took you, and did not please you? Dawn might find me
lying here stiff with one of your knives stuck in me. And suppose I
pleased you, but my pleasing you did not please your father? Then the dawn
might find me hanging downward from a pole, with the smoke of my burning guts
rising up around me. And there are important things I have to do in Zunga." He
very nearly added, "More important than servicing a randy princess,"
but realized that would be suicidally untactful. Instead he substituted,
"Things that will not be done if I
die."
"I like that, Blade," said Aumara. "I am not so vain that I rejoice in having
a man fling away all his plans and duties to take me. But I can assure you
there is no danger. I believe you will do your best, and no man can do any
more. If your best is not good enough for me, there simply will be no other
time. But if it is..." She left the sentence snidely unfinished. "And my
father will say nothing, even if he learns of what we have done. He does not
see fit to keep me in a cage, now that I am a grown woman. Even less will he
try to hold me back now that my last brother is dead and I will be joint ruler
of Zunga with a husband someday."
She reached up to undo the thongs at the neck of her robe, then shrugged the
robe to the ground. Nude except for the belt, she stood before him. Her skin

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was very smooth and its mahogany color had a slight sheen in the moonlight.
Blade stared. In spite of his surprise, he felt his erection rise and stiffen
still further.
"Here and now, Princess?"
"None will be looking or listening for us, Blade. If we are married, our first
bedding will be before a royal assembly with ten thousand Zungan warriors
looking on and giving you advice. Why not here and now?"
Aumara's mention of their being married nearly made Blade's erection collapse
on the spot. Aumara noticed this. "Ah, Blade, I surprised you, did I not? But
come, I think I see a little life still down there."
One long-fingered hand drifted down, then up under Blade's loincloth. Her
fingers played busily and in a few moments she smiled. "As I thought, there is
life. It is time, Blade. It is time."
She unbuckled her belt and let it fall to the ground. Blade undid his
loincloth and tossed it down on top of her robe. Then he stepped forward and
put his arms around her, drawing her close to him, until her face lay against
his shoulder. His hands went from the back of her neck down the straight back
with its smooth, velvety skin, stroking, caressing, cupping the firm,
perfectly rounded buttocks. Looking down, he saw her eyes close and her lips
curl up in a smile. A smile of contentment so far, like a baby being held or a
cat being petted. No passion in it yet.
He raised a hand and tilted her chin up until their lips could meet. Her mouth
was rigid and stiff for a moment, for she seemed unfamiliar with kissing. Then
it flowed open, and her small delicate tongue

leaped out to meet his, moving like a living thing. Her arms rose from her
sides and locked around his body. Her, hands met in the small of his back and
began a gentle pressure there.
He pulled away for a moment's breath and looked at Aumara's face again. Yes,
there was passion showing now, no mistaking it. Suddenly she sank to her
knees, hands still clasped at the small of Blade's back. Her mouth opened,
then warm, wet lips closed down on Blade's swollen member.
If Blade had felt aroused before, her expert fellatio brought him higher, and
then higher still. He had to clamp down all his self-control to keep from a
fierce and savage coming. His body was bowed backward as he fought for
restraint. Aumara's hands pulled him forward bit by bit, as her lips worked
their way up his organ. It seemed that she wanted to take the whole massive
swollen rod in her mouth.
Suddenly she withdrew, with final twisting motions of her lips as they passed
over the end that nearly put an end to Blade. He let out something between a
groan and a sigh of relief as the steadily rising pressure faded away to
something more tolerable.
Now he wanted to be in her, desperately wanted to feel her wet canal
tightening around him. He knelt down on the ground, grasping her firmly by the
upper arms. Then he lay back, and as he did so, he pulled her slowly but
firmly down on him, penetrating her just as slowly and firmly.
She was aroused and dripping and no virgin-that he felt the moment he entered.
Her head went back at such an angle that for a moment Blade wondered how her
neck could manage it, and her eyes rolled up in her head. She was no virgin
indeed! She was expert and hungry and demanding. Her hips began to move in a
slow circular rolling motion that alternately tightened and loosened the
pressure on him. Again he had to fight for self-control.
Up and down, around and around she churned. Her breath came now in great
whooping gasps, so loud that Blade half expected a dozen guards to wander over
to find out what the noise was. Next to his losing control, the last thing he
wanted was a mob of spectators.
It went on and on, and fortunately so did Blade. There was more than one time
when he knew absolutely that another half second of Aumara's stimulation would
bring him over the top. But she always sensed those moments, and always slowed

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her movements by just the little bit needed to save the situation. In spite of
the coolness, they were both sweating now. Aumara's sweat dripped down off her
writhing body onto Blade and mixed with his.
Blade's hands had been holding onto her arms all this time. Now they seemed to
develop a will of their own, moving inward and down. Her nipples jutted
forward from her full, perfectly curved breasts, hard little points. His hands
kept moving, down over the curves of her breasts, down over the nipples.
As his hands cupped her breasts, she exploded. The scream rising in her throat
died in a hiss, but her body arched like a bow in a series of wild
convulsions. Then so did Blade's, as he bent himself upward, driving still
deeper as he gushed and spurted into her. He fell back on the ground, Aumara
sagged down on top of him and lay with her head on his shoulder, his relaxing
organ still inside her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blade was never quite sure how he and Aumara got back to their tents
afterward. And he had only vague memories of rolling himself up in his hide
cloak after crawling back into the tent. But he had very vivid memories of the
encounter the next morning, when the bawling of the cattle as they were
watered and the clatter of the pots as the slaves prepared breakfast roused
him out before dawn.

Vivid memories, and pleasant ones. Aumara was beautiful, and she had obviously
been well satisfied.
Her interest in him was another piece of luck. Whether it was good or bad he
couldn't say right now. As long as he could satisfy with both his wits, and
his virility his luck should remain good. But the affairs of princesses could
develop nasty complications at a moment's notice. So could affairs with
princesses. He would have to do his best, and rely on the ruthless but
apparently just King Afuno to take up any slack.
They were on the move again, before all the dawn colors had faded from the
sky, ambling along at the same tedious pace as the day before. The plain
stretched out before them, as bare and flat and empty as before. It was not
until nearly sundown that the smoke and the herds of Dorkalu, the Zungan
capital, came in sight.
"We are almost home," said Aumara. The grin she gave Blade made it obvious
what home meant to her, at least for the moment. It meant more privacy and
comfort for them and their lovemaking. Blade decided not to try explaining to
her how much time he would have to spend training the warriors, assuming that
the Great D'bors and the On'ror let him.
The homeward-bound herds thickened, until the warriors had to form a ring
around the caravan to keep its cattle and those of the herds separate. A few
minutes later Blade made out a long, dark line on the horizon. "The walls of
Dorkalu," Aumara said.
The sun dipped below the horizon and the tropical darkness swallowed up the
land. A little after that, torches sparked in the darkness ahead as warriors
came out from the city to escort the caravan the final miles to it. And
eventually more torches sparked in the darkness ahead, held by men standing on
top of the walls themselves. These stretched out of sight into the darkness on
either side, and rose more than twenty feet above the plain. Dead ahead lay a
massive gate, wide enough for a dozen men to march through.
The cattle turned aside instead of going through the gate. In Dorkalu, the
herds had their own separate compounds outside the walls, each with its own
fortifications and guards. But the royal caravan kept straight on.
The gate squealed and groaned open, and the caravan marched through without
breaking formation or step. On the other side of the massive walls an inner
gate led out onto another of the enormous open fields. Blade could not even
see its edges in the darkness. What he could see would have swallowed
Brona twice over. In the center of the field rose what could only be King
Afuno's palace, looming behind its own wall, its roof and balconies outlined

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by still more flickering torches.
Now the caravan broke up in a flurry of barked orders and slaves and warriors
hustling about on a dozen different errands. Afuno leaped down from his
platform as lightly as any young warrior and came over to Blade. Four warriors
nearly as large as he was stood on each side of him.
"Blade," he said, "we must move quickly before the Ulungas try to make people
forget Chamba's sacrilege and remember only that I went against their word.
They will not have an easy time of it, for
Chamba's sacrilege was great and public. But they may do it, and if they do,
we will be back where we started. I will not give you up to the Ulungas. But
in such a case I would not be able to give you a chance to train my warriors
in your English fighting arts."
He sighed. "If I had one son left-just one-I could throw myself against the
Ulungas, sacrifice myself to bring them down. And then my son could rule a
kingdom in which the Ulungas had no more power. But there are only daughters
left. It is always a delicate thing to set up the joint rule of a princess and
her

consort. It is too delicate a thing to survive what might happen if I fought
the Ulungas openly."
Blade was worried. This gloomy note was something new for Afuno. "Surely at
least the War Council will not listen to the Ulungas?"
"The Great Mors are supposed to be like you-wise men, not just warriors with
strong arms and thick heads. Not all of them are. And the On'ror is only
partly a war leader. He also speaks for the Ulungas in questions of war. He
will speak this time, and he will speak loudly. I only hope nobody listens to
him. At least, not until you have done your work for the Zungans."
In spite of these disturbing words, Blade managed to get a good night's sleep.
It turned out he needed it, because the next morning a summons to appear
before the War Council came.
Like most Zungan public business, attending the War Council had to be done on
an empty stomach.
Blade supposed this was certainly one way of discouraging long speeches. But
he would rather have sat through any number of speeches with something in his
stomach than face the War Council and present his case with his empty stomach
growling like a starving dog.
By now he was used to explaining himself, his fighting arts, and the English
people to the Zungans, while putting his best foot forward. He tried to avoid
claiming too much for his fighting skills, pointing out that he had never seen
slave raiders in action. But if they were as he had heard them described, he
could certainly teach the Zungans how to do much better against them. They
would not win every fight, but they would win many more. And they would do
this without any sacrilegious violations of the Sky Father's laws, such as
throwing their spears as Chamba had done. Blade saw Afuno smile at the mention
of
Chamba.
When Blade finished, he had no idea whether he had won or lost his case. The
men of the War Council had listened to his entire presentation with totally
expressionless faces, except for Afuno. And the faces had not changed when
Blade went out to await their decision.
There was beer and bread waiting for him in the corridor, and he fell to. He
had just polished off the last of both when he saw a slave woman come down the
hall and stop before the commander of the council's guards. They whispered
together for a moment, then the commander turned to Blade and said, "This
woman is Princess Aumara's. The princess wants you. You must go."
"Now?" asked Blade.
"Yes."
"But the council-"
"Richard Blade of the English," said the guard commander with a grin. "Do not

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fear the War Council.
Fear the princess if she becomes angry. I know. Soon you will too." There was
no trace of a leer in the man's grin. If he knew anything, he was keeping it
to himself. Blade nodded and followed the woman.
He did not have to follow her very far. Aumara was standing in the corner of a
small room off the next corridor to the left. As the door of the room closed
behind him, Aumara slipped into his arms. She seemed to want to be held, and
as he held her, he felt her trembling.
"What is it, Princess? Do you... ?" He was trying to think of a tactful way to
ask a warrior princess what had frightened her when she saved him the trouble.

"The On'ror has asked for my hand."
It took Blade a moment to realize what she had said. It took him another
moment to realize what it meant. When he did, he swore softly, invoking both
the Sky Father and a variety of other deities picked up on his adventures.
Then he shook his head in impotent fury.
"I see you understand," said Aumara.
"Yes. The man who can determine whether I become a great hero of the Zungans
is now my rival for you. If he gives me the chance to train the Zungans, I may
end up with fame above his, second only to
King Afuno. If he does not give me the chance, he himself will be the
strongest candidate for your hand, no matter what your father thinks of him."
"Yes," said Aumara bitterly. "And the On'ror and I will rule for a few short
years over the Zungans while the slave raiders continue to bleed them. Then we
will die with our people when the Rulami and the
Kandans march together."
Blade felt like swearing again, but realized it would be a waste of breath.
All the optimism he had built up over the past couple of hours had drained out
of him. He sat down and stared off into the darkness of the room, his mind
working furiously.
"Can you delay accepting any consort for a while?"
"How long, Blade?"
Blade frowned. "It depends on how much of a chance to train the warriors I
get. Whatever you do, hold off choosing until I have some sort of a victory to
show off. That will give me the status I need to make an offer for you.
"Whatever you and I think, your father won't dare accept me until I have
enough status among the warriors so that he won't face a rebellion by choosing
me."
Aumara nodded sadly. "There are very many times when I was growing up that I
wished I was not a princess. This is the first time I have wished that since I
became a woman." She sighed and seemed to put the thought away, then returned
to the issue. "How long will it take you to win that victory?"
"That I won't even be able to guess at until the War Council decides what I am
to do."
After that there was nothing more to say, and they sat in the dark stifling
little room holding each other.
Blade did not know how long they sat before the woman knocked gently on the
door and whispered, "The council is calling for Blade."
Unwinding himself from Aumara's arms, he rose and followed the woman back to
the council chamber.
The guard led him inside and then vanished. Standing before the fifteen seated
figures, he scanned the dark faces for some sign of what their decision had
been.
Fourteen of the faces were as unreadable as ever. The fifteenth was the
On'ror's. Blade looked the man over more closely than before, noticing the
thickening jowls, the high forehead, the missing finger and the half-missing
ear, the scars on his chest and arms. This man was an enemy. One he could take
almost easily in a straight fight, he suspected. But would it ever come to,
that? Blade doubted it.

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"Richard Blade of the English," said the On'ror in a voice now as gross and
ugly as his body. "The council has heard you. It has talked of you. It has
decided." The man paused. He stretched the pause until it was obvious to Blade
that this was a deliberate effort to make him sweat and fidget. He stared back
at the On'ror with a level, expressionless gaze. He was damned if the man was
going to win their very first confrontation.
Finally the On'ror got the message that Blade wasn't going to yield. He lifted
his head until he appeared to be staring off into space-or perhaps up into the
heavens? Once again he prolonged the display of reverence in an effort to make
Blade nervous.
Blade remained unmoved, but the strain was too much for King Afuno. "Well, get
on with it, damn you!"
the King snapped. "The Sky Father isn't going to appear on the ceiling and
give you a scroll with the words you want written on it in gold."
The king's voice jolted the On'ror into action. He rose to his feet and the
rest of the council followed.
"Richard Blade of the English, your methods of fighting may not be pleasing to
the Sky Father. But we shall not utterly cast out them or you: You shall train
ten men in your arts for three moons. Then you shall wait three full moons
more, and each of those men shall train ten more. After that all shall wait
one full year, that the Sky Father may show us whether or not your arts are
pleasing to him. Neither you nor any of the men you have trained shall
instruct any other warriors during that year. Further we shall not say until
all the time has passed." He sat down again, his massive rump hitting the
chair with a solid thump.
The grin on his face was almost a smirk.
Forty objections and as many curses died on Blade's lips at a sharp look from
Afuno. With an effort he controlled himself, took a deep breath, and without
waiting for the guards, turned around and left the chamber. Outside he headed
for the stairs to the second floor. He had to get out of this stifling gloom,
onto a balcony and into the sun and the fresh air.
Aumara met him halfway up the stairs. "I thought you would be coming up here,
Blade. What was the decision? No, I can see it in your face. Bad?"
Blade was calm now and his ability to plan was back. He nodded, but slowly.
"It could have been worse." He told her. She shook her head.
"I cannot hold out for six months, and never for a whole year after that. Even
my father would cast me down as First Princess if I tried it. You must do
something sooner."
Blade had to laugh at this, but it was a bitter laugh.
"Very well, Princess. I will see if I can defeat the slave raiders with ten
men."
CHAPTER TWELVE
It did not come to that. Nayung, King Afuno, and several of the Great Mors who
were thoroughly out of sympathy with the On'ror's plans pitched in and kept
Blade's job from being completely impossible. It was merely fantastically
difficult.
Blade chose his ten trainees carefully, with the advice of King Afuno. Among
them were two Great
Mors, five Mors, and three other fighters of known wisdom as well as skill.
They were of the anti-Ulunga faction. Blade was able to be entirely frank with
them the first time he gathered them together for a

training session.
"The On'ror and some of the War Council want to play the game of the Ulungas.
I don't know what that game is, but I have seen things like it in my travels.
It is a game dangerous to the Zungans. The only people who will gain from it
are the Ulungas themselves sand perhaps the slave raiders of Rulam and

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Kanda. But you do not want to let the Ulungas lead you by the hand like little
children. That is good. You are wise men as well as great warriors. And by
your wisdom as well as by your war skills you may save the people of Zunga."
That was a prospect he deliberately and carefully held out to them-that they
would be the saviors of Zunga. He thought it wiser not to push himself too far
forward, regardless of what plans
Princess Aumara had for him.
After that there was no difficulty in whipping up his students' enthusiasm.
They were all grown men, trained warriors, in top physical and mental
condition, and more than willing to learn. Training them was a pleasure, even
if an exhausting one. Blade soon learned that they were insatiable in their
curiosity about the ways of the English, not only in fighting but in all other
things. He had to keep mentally very much on his toes to answer their
questions. And he had to keep even more on his toes physically. Not only were
they willing to train from dawn to dark and even at night, but they learned
fast. Within ten days half of them were already dangerous opponents.
Almost as great a pleasure to Blade were the various tricks he and King Afuno
were playing on the
Ulungas and the On'ror. The matter of the new balanced spears, for example.
King Afuno's household included a large contingent of smiths. He had them make
up the twenty practice spears for Blade's students.
After they had made these, the smiths waited for a few days while Blade tested
the spears. Then he sent back the five best, and the smiths went right back to
work making more. Soon they were turning out fifty to a hundred of the new
spears a week. In obscure corners of the cellars of King Afuno's palace, piles
of long hide-wrapped bundles began to grow. Each bundle contained ten of the
new spears.
"And the Ulungas can say nothing about it," said Afuno with a triumphant grin.
"They said only that you could not train more than a certain number of
fighters. They said nothing about not making the weapons for any number."
There were even ways devised for getting around the training restrictions. All
the training sessions were held in the open field, where anybody who wanted to
stop and watch could do so. Many warriors did.
Afterward, some of them went off and tried out privately what they had seen in
the sessions. They soon discovered that the standard Zungan spear was not
nearly as good as the new balanced ones for the new, fighting style. They came
to Blade, asking for new spears. He sent them to Nayung, who asked each one a
few questions, intended to reveal if the warrior was a sympathizer with the
Ulungas or not. If
Nayung approved of him, the warrior was then taken down into the cellars of
the palace and given two of the new spears.
By the time Nayung was back on his feet, Blade had trained his hard core of
ten about as much as he could without their going stale or getting bored. At
least fifty more warriors had watched and practiced enough so that they also
were now giving lessons. About five hundred warriors in all were now learning
the new fighting techniques, and more than a thousand of the new spears were
in circulation.
King Afuno was openly delighted at this neat outflanking of the Ulungas. So
was Blade. He had heard J
tell many tales of the years when intelligence service budgets had been
slashed to the bone. The younger men, the field agents in particular, had
performed miracles of improvisation and judicious deception. In some of those
stories there had been a note of mild scorn for the postwar intelligence
operatives, who

had never known a real starvation budget, or learned how to outwit Whitehall.
Well, when he got back from this trip, Blade knew he could tell J at least one
good story of making do and outwitting higher authorities.
But as well as things were going, and as much fun as he was having, Blade knew

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the horizon was still far from clear. Neither he nor Afuno nor Nayung believed
that the Ulungas would overlook the tricks and evasions of their decision
indefinitely. Even if the Ulungas were not sufficiently familiar with things
military to recognize what was happening, the On'ror certainly was and would
pass the word to his masters. And then the fat would be, in the fire-Blade's
fat, Afuno's, and Nayung's.
Meanwhile, the On'ror was also pushing his suit for Aumara. The princess would
neither encourage nor discourage him. As long as he kept coming around on
visits and talking to her, she would be able to learn at least some of what he
was thinking and planning. And what she learned, she passed on to Blade each
time she slipped into his room at night.
For many weeks there was nothing in the On'ror's words to cause Blade much
alarm. In fact, Aumara's mocking recitals of the man's constant boasting
became something he looked forward to almost as much as to their lovemaking.
Aumara had a savage gift for mimicry. But he listened closely to those
recitals while laughing at them. A boastful man who may drop hints of his
plans while boasting is an easier enemy.
Finally the day came when he gathered his ten students together and told them
that tomorrow they would go north to hunt slave raiders. If he had just
offered each of them a ton of gold or half a dozen beautiful women, they could
not have been happier. When the cheering died, he reminded them to bring three
spears and two water bottles each. He warned them not to expect that the slave
raiders would lie down and die when the new spears were waved in their faces.
He made it clear that this was very much a trial run, and they were not going
to fight a pitched battle if the Sky Father made it possible. And he was quite
sure that they had not heard half a word of all his warnings and advice.
Hoping that the Zungans' luck would hold until they got their overconfidence
out of their systems, he went off to his chamber.
Aumara came to him that night. As she slipped into his bed and flowed up
against him, he felt her trembling. Not with desire this time, but with fear.
He held her gently and murmured in her ear as though he were comforting a
child, but the trembling went on. Finally he pulled her tight against him and
whispered in her ear, "What is it, my princess?"
She swallowed. "The On'ror knows that you are taking your men out tomorrow."
"So? That's not a secret. Why should it be? The slave raiders aren't going to
find out about it. And what good would it do if they did?"
"Are you sure, Blade? Are you sure the slave raiders don't know?"
It was Blade's turn to stiffen. "What have you heard? Has the On'ror been
saying something?"
"Yes. He came to my chamber this evening and drank more beer than usual. He
seemed happier than I
had ever seen him. I gave him more beer, and... " she paused, "I even let him
make love to me. You are not angry?"
"Of course not," said Blade. "Go on."
"When we were in bed together, he kept muttering something about 'The English
warrior's time is coming. He has had his run. Now he thinks he will go out and
get so famous he can have you. He won't.

He won't even come back alive.' And then he laughed. He laughed for a long
time, then he fell asleep."
Blade let his breath out in a long whistling sigh. Did these boasts mean that
the On'ror was prepared to betray his own people to the slave raiders? That
was an ugly thought. And it put Blade in an awkward position, to say the
least. If he canceled the mission to the north, how could he convince his
warriors that he hadn't simply lost his nerve? But if he took them north and
the On'ror had passed the word on to the slave raiders to lay a trap, what
then? Would it look as if he had led his ten picked men into a trap? Not to
mention what losing many of the trained instructors in their first battle
would do to the Zungans' morale.

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Unfortunately there was no way back. He would simply have to march out
tomorrow and be particularly careful. The plains and forests to the north were
vast, his patrol small, the number of slave raiders limited.
He and the enemy would have plenty of room to miss each other. He didn't like
relying on luck, but for the moment it looked as if he would have to. With
that giving him a little peace of mind, he fell asleep.
With Zungans, there was no problem in having the patrol headed north out of
the city before dawn. It took them an hour to get clear of Dorkalu's herds
going out to pasture, then they were alone.
They were alone for two whole days, in fact. Over the land to the north of
Dorkalu the hand of the slavers had fallen heavily. Huts and whole towns lay
abandoned and ruined, fields that had once been rich with grain now grew
masses of weeds, the rangy survivors of the cattle herds had gone wild and
lumbered away at the approach of Blade's men.
The second night out, they camped in a patch of forest on the northernmost
edge of Zungan territory with extra sentries posted on all sides. The morning
of the third day dawned overcast, less rare now that they were farther north.
To Blade this was nothing, but to the Zungans clouds concealed the face of the
Sky Father, who would not be able to see them going into battle and judge
their new fighting skills. Blade did not try to argue them out of their
nervousness. He was far from calm himself, here in enemy territory and with
Aumara's warning hanging over his head like the gray sky itself. He hoped
their nervousness would vanish with the first successful combat.
They no longer marched boldly across country, but stalked like hunting animals
from one patch of cover to another. The Zungans had nothing to learn from
Blade about the use of cover. In fact, he hoped he would have time to learn
from them. A Zungan could stretch along the branch of a tree and remain so
motionless that he seemed to merge with the branch. To a man not looking for
him, he would be totally invisible.
The first sight of their enemies came toward midafternoon, sooner than Blade
had expected. One of the
Zungan scouts suddenly flattened himself against a tree, then cautiously waved
Blade forward. Slipping forward and flattening himself against the other side
of the tree, Blade followed the Zungan's pointing hand. Fourteen soldiers in
two files of seven were tramping along the edge of a small ravine. They wore
Rulami-style iron helmets and cuirasses, and carried the Rulami broadswords.
But on each helmet and breastplate was a vertical white line.
"Kandans," said the Zungan warrior. "That white line is the sign of the Ivory
Tower. This will be easy.
They are not as good soldiers as the Rulami."
"Do not count the bodies until they are dead," said Blade. He turned back
toward the woods where the other nine Zungans were. He waited for a count of
five, until the soldiers reached a stretch of ravine where there were no
bushes to give them cover. Then he raised his hand and swung it across his own
throat in a chopping gesture.

The Zungans swept forward from their cover so silently that they were halfway
to the ravine before the soldiers looked up and saw them coming. If the
Zungans could have thrown their spears, most of the soldiers would have been
dead within thirty seconds. As it was, they had time to blunder into a sort of
defensive formation and raise their swords and shields before the Zungans were
on them.
Blade jabbed over the top of a soldier's shield and saw the soldier flinch and
drop his guard. Blade's partner beat the sword down the rest of the way with a
smashing blow, then swept the weighted butt of his spear sideways. The top, of
the shield guided it straight to the soldier's jaw. Blade heard bone smash and
saw the soldier reel and collapse. His fall left a gap in the enemy's ragged
line. Blade led his partner through it.
As he passed in through the gap, he thrust at a knee exposed by a shield

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raised to defend against a
Zungan downstroke. The knee crunched, the shield toppled, and the downstroke
plunged into the man's throat all in the same split second. A gurgling scream,
and he too went down.
Now Blade was behind the enemy, but four of them were turning to face him.
Then there were only three, as a Zungan caught one man turning, striking low
with the spear butt into the man's unprotected groin. The man went down onto
his hands and knees, and the victor reversed his spear and drove the head down
through the man's spine. Then Blade's partner feinted low, pulling down the
shield of the man facing Blade. Blade himself thrust straight, seeing the
spearhead drive into the bearded face, seeing the face split apart and
disintegrate.
"They are as helpless as children," a Zungan shouted behind Blade, and clubbed
an enemy's sword out of his hand with his spear butt. The man dove after his
weapon, but died before he reached it as the spear butt slammed down again
across the back of his neck. Then Blade no longer had time to pick out
individual details of fights, his own or anybody else's, as he and his partner
concentrated on putting their opponents down.
These two were definitely not helpless as children. Blade leaped high to avoid
a sword thrust and fell down over the edge of the ravine. He landed on all
fours, and a soldier rushed at him, sword raised to chop down into Blade's
skull. But in his enthusiasm the man raised his shield also. Blade's spear
drove upward in a single-handed thrust and into the soldier's groin. Before
the man could fall, Blade was on his feet and blocking downcuts from two more
soldiers. His spear whirled, one sword flew down, the other flew up, and both
men backed away. Blade would have taken their surrender, but his partner would
not.
He leaped forward and thrust both men through the throat in a quick double
stroke.
Eventually the fight ended, with one Zungan and twelve of the soldiers lying
dead on the ground. Another
Zungan was wounded. Two of the soldiers had abandoned weapons, armor, and
comrades and vanished into the forest. The Zungans would have gone after them,
but Blade called them back. Wait until the next time slave raiders enter
Zungan land, he told them. Then you can have all the fun you want hunting them
down one by one. In their land, we stay together.
The Zungans did not mind his lecture. In fact, they were so overjoyed at their
victory that they probably would not have minded very much if he had
proclaimed himself King of Zunga. They might not have believed him, but they
would not have been angry. Twelve of the enemy down, and only one Zungan!
There had been no battle like that in a hundred years or even more, ever since
the raiders began wearing armor. The iron of the enemy would no longer protect
them. They would have to learn to fight like real warriors now, and that they
would never do. The Zungans would kill them all.
Blade finally called a halt to the rejoicing. The twelve dead soldiers were
stripped of their swords and personal gear and thrown into the ravine. Blade
would have liked to take their armor also, but realized

that this far from home the added weight would be a hindrance. Another thing
to keep in mind for the next time the raiders entered Zungan land-pick up all
the armor. Don't waste it in trophies. If it can't be worn, melt it down for
spearheads.
They laid the dead Zungan on the ground and stood around him while four of his
comrades chanted the
Warrior's Death. Then they placed the ritual bunch of grass on his chest and
marched on. Darkness finally came down on them a good ten miles beyond the
battle-site. They munched cold dried meat and grubbed edible mushrooms from
around the roots of trees. Then the sentries were posted, and sleep came.
Blade took the first watch because he was still too keyed-up to sleep. A

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victory. A small one, but even he had to be encouraged by the way the new
fighting technique had showed up against the soldiers.
Would a thousand Zungans properly trained be able to do as well against a
thousand soldiers, also properly trained?
Perhaps. Assuming, that is, that the On'ror allowed him to train those
thousand Zungans. Or, preferably, ten thousand. What was the On'ror's game?
Knowing that the answer would most likely be found back in
Dorkalu, not out here, Blade put the matter from his mind.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There were neither sights nor sounds of pursuit all night, and still none when
dawn broke over the camp.
The Zungans were ready to stop worrying about pursuit. They were cheerfully
confident that they would outmarch or outrun as well as outfight any soldiers
coming after them. Once more Blade did not try to argue with them, he merely
gave his orders. In spite of their high spirits the Zungans obeyed him as well
as ever.
Blade leaned against a tree and conjured up his mental map of the area. The
best course for them seemed to be heading east. There lay the roads south from
Kanda to its satellite towns. Along these roads passed slave raiders heading
south, slave coffles heading north, and merchant caravans headed in both
directions. The Kandans would not be expecting Zungan raiders to strike there.
With surprise on their side, the Zungans might cause uproar, confusion, and
destruction out of all proportion to their numbers.
Blade switched off his mental map and faced the warriors. "We go east," he
said. They spread out into their scouting line and followed him toward the
faint glow behind the overcast that told of the rising sun.
With the sun almost invisible, it was hard to tell time. Blade guessed it was
about noon when the most advanced scout suddenly halted and pointed at the
ground in a clearing just ahead. Blade joined the man and frowned as he looked
down. The ground was too hard to show goad footprints, but there was no
mistaking the swath of crushed and flattened grass. It had not begun to lose
color, either. The soldiers had passed this way only hours before.
Suddenly the gray day seemed gloomier than before, and the thin forest somehow
denser and more menacing. Blade shook his head. They would have to go back. It
would be stupid to plunge on toward the eastern roads if the Kandans were
patrolling this far west. The roads still lay a day's march ahead, and now
they would have the enemy at their backs for every foot of that march.
Blade gathered the Zungans around him and explained the situation. His own
partner protested the loudest.

"But Blade, there is no honor for us in running away from soldiers who passed
by hours ago."
"Where they passed once, they will pass again. And when they pass again, they
will be behind you."
"They will never pick up our trail."
"Perhaps not. But they might. And then they would call up other soldiers and
surround us. We cannot fight hundreds of enemy soldiers, not with only ten
men. The east roads will have to wait until the next time we come back. Then
we will come with a hundred warriors, and the Kandans will remember our visit
for a long time."
The Zungans still seemed unhappy. So Blade decided that now was perhaps a good
time for a lecture he had been planning to give them later. "Remember, each of
you will soon be needed to train many more warriors in the new ways of
fighting. And soon after that you will be leading them into battle. Consider
them as your children and think about your duty to them. Who will teach them
or lead them in killing the raiders if you throw away your lives now? It is
sometimes a warrior's honor to go away and live, instead of fighting and
dying." If any were still unconvinced, they said nothing as he led them back
toward the west.

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Blade was no happier than the Zungans about abandoning the raid on the eastern
roads. A victory there would have made him a man of mark, and proved the new
fighting techniques beyond any doubt. It would have driven home a sharp thrust
at the Ulungas and the On'ror. Now all of this would have to wait until the
next raid north. And when that would be, not even the Sky Father knew. Blade
did not like finding Kandan patrols this far west. It suggested special
patrols, laid on to find or catch-what? Him and his men? He liked that idea
even less.
They retraced their steps for more than an hour, with no more signs that they
did not have the whole countryside to themselves. He drove the Zungans along
at a mile-eating pace-not that any Zungan warrior ever needed to be driven to
cover ground fast. By mid-afternoon the overcast was beginning to break up and
the sun began to blaze down on the marching men. The improved weather lifted
Blade's spirits. He began to relax and enjoy the steady rhythm of his feet on
the hard ground.
Then a flash of light from the north struck his eyes. He stopped, turned,
stared in that direction. Another flash came, then a series of them. With a
chorus of squawks and a flurry of wings, a flock of large pink birds shot up
into the air, also from the north.
Blade snapped to full alertness. The signs pointed unmistakably to a force of
soldiers off to the north. His jaw set. There was only one way to find out. He
motioned the Zungans to gather around him. Pointing to the north, he said, "I
think there are more soldiers there. I am going to go and find out if there
are too many to attack or not." He pointed to his partner. "You come with me,
but keep well behind me. If there are only a few soldiers, we will call the
others forward and fight them. If there are many, we will run back and warn
the others, and we will all run." The Zungans' faces fell. Blade glared at
them. "Remember what
I said about warriors who must sometimes choose to go away and live for
another day?"
"Yes," several muttered. "But to run away from an enemy in plain sight?"
"If it is the only way to stay alive, you will do it. Or do you want the
Ulungas to rule in Zunga forever?"
He thought of adding his suspicions of the On'ror. But this was not the time
or place for that. The warriors reluctantly fell into silence and drew back
under cover. Blade nodded to his partner and led the way.

Blade guessed that the line of trees where he had seen the flashes was about a
hundred yards north. The ground between was open and flat, with no cover large
enough to hide a rabbit. Blade felt painfully exposed as he stepped out from
behind the trees, even though he knew that neither the Kandans nor the
Rulami used the bow.
Step by step he moved forward, with his partner keeping parallel to him about
twenty feet behind. Every second he expected the bushes to crackle and crash
and spew out armed men. Now he had covered half the distance. There was
definitely something behind the trees; he could see more metallic glintings.
He could hear nothing, nor see any movement. This suggested that the men ahead
must be trained soldiers, the men of Rulam. He was close to simply turning
about and retreating. The men of Rulam would not be as easy a proposition as
the Kandans had been.
Then something finally moved in the woods. Not a mass of armed men pouring out
into the open, but a long heavy rope with a weighted loop at the end. It
soared high into the air, uncoiling as it flew, high over
Blade's head, straight down onto the Zungan behind him and around the man's
neck. As the noose descended, the rope went tight, and the Zungan was yanked
off his feet.
Blade drew his sword and leaped at the rope. The sword flashed up, came down,
rebounded from tough fibers without cutting through. He raised the sword
again. As he did so, a second loop arched out of the bushes and thudded into

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place around his own neck. And then the bushes did spew out armed men, dozens
of them, the sunlight gleaming on their polished armor. Their shields bore red
circles -the badge of Rulam.
In their haste to spring the trap, the Rulami forgot to jerk Blade's rope
tight. Dropping sword and spear to leave both hands free, he clawed it from
around his neck, then snatched up his weapons before the soldiers could reach
him. Sunlight flashed off spearhead and sword blade as he flourished them
overhead, roaring out, "Warriors! Remember your honor! Flee and fight again! I
will delay those-!" He did not know if the Zungans heard him or not, but he
knew that if they got a good headstart, they would be safe.
No armored soldier in any army in any dimension could run down a Zungan
warrior moving at full speed.
Then he was suddenly too busy with his own fight to pay any more attention to
his scattering followers.
As the Rulami formed a circle around him, Blade discarded his sword. Then he
yelled, "Come on, you cowards. There's only one of me, there's forty of you.
Or is one man of the English equal to forty of
Rulam? I've heard a lot of bad things about your city, but nothing that bad.
You wear iron on your heads to keep your brains from falling out. Do you wear
it on your stomachs to keep your guts from falling out?
Maybe you need some iron inside your guts, not outside? Well, I'll give it to
you!" And without pausing for breath, he charged.
The two men in front of him jerked up their shields to meet a straight thrust.
Blade's spear whirled up and over. The weighted butt crashed down on one
polished helmet, then snapped sideways into an exposed cheek. The two men flew
in opposite directions, but instantly the gap in the Rulami line was closed by
two more.
These did not wait for Blade to come at them. He had to back away into the
center of the circle as their swords flickered and jabbed at him, waiting for
an opening. It came. His spearhead darted in under one shield, laying open a
thigh. He heaved upward on the shaft, sending the man sprawling backward, then
swung the spear sharply to the right. It rode up across the second man's
shield, caught his helmet, flipped it high into the air. The spear whirled end
for end in another lightning stroke, and this time the butt end came down on
an unhelmeted head.
Blade did not wait for the man with the smashed skull to hit the ground. He
shifted rapidly left, then right

as two men charged him from opposite sides. The spear shot out level as he
spun about. Like a runaway revolving door the shaft caught both men and
knocked them sprawling. One's helmet came off as he fell.
Blade stamped down on the exposed neck and felt bone give way. At the same
moment he drove his spear down into the other man's face, smashing it between
the teeth into the brain.
He realized a moment later that he should not have taken the time to do that.
An entire section of the circle charged in against him at once, half a dozen
men at least. He should not waste time killing men who were down. His reason
told him that, but his blood fury told him something else. Now that he had
these slavers within killing range, he wanted to kill as many of them as
possible before they killed him.
He retreated hastily before the advancing section. As he did so, he realized
that there were just enough of them to get in each other's way. Blade knew he
was a master of exploiting the advantage one man always has over a group in
such a situation.
They were trying to back him against another section of the circle. No chance,
friends, he said to himself.
He stepped forward, the spearhead went down into the ground, and like a pole
vaulter he soared clear over the heads of the advancing soldiers. A sword
flashed up, waving helplessly at him as he sailed past.

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Then he was behind the line, spinning around, spear up and thrusting.
He drove the spearhead into two men below the cuirasses before they could even
begin to turn. He opened the side of a third man's face with the spear's edge.
A quick sideways flick of his powerful wrists, and the heavy wood shaft caught
a fourth man on the neck. The two survivors of the advancing section suddenly
decided to stop advancing. That didn't save them. Blade feinted at one man's
head, then jabbed the butt into his comrade's knee. As the second man reeled
and opened the first one's flank, Blade moved in before he could get his
shield around. The spear jabbed up into the man's armpit so hard it nearly
jammed there.
But in the moment before he could get back into the open, three more men
rushed at Blade. One of them stumbled over a fallen body and staggered
forward. He cannoned into Blade, throwing him off balance. Fighting to keep
his feet, Blade let go of the spear with one hand and rammed his fist into the
side of the man's neck. The man jerked and started to slide to the ground.
Before Blade could get both hands back on the spear, a second man chopped down
wildly with his sword. The sword struck the head of Blade's spear with a
tremendous clang, and the jar broke Blade's grip on the shaft. The spear
slammed down hard on the ground. Blade lunged for it, and suddenly found two
sword points waving within inches of his throat. He froze, looking up at the
soldiers. Under the helmets, their eyes were wide and staring, and the
knuckles of their sword hands stood out white. These men would kill him if he
moved an inch.
Then behind the soldiers he saw another figure loom up. He could not see it
clearly, but it seemed to be dressed in flowing silvery robes, with something
off-white dangling on its chest. He could not make out the face. But the voice
was that of a man in authority.
"Do not kill him," said the voice.
Blade tensed. If these soldiers had to try to take him alive... He took a deep
breath, ready to plunge forward the minute one of the swords shifted as much
as an inch.
But the sound came from behind him, feet approaching at a run. The two swords
held steady, keeping him facing rigidly forward. He froze as the footsteps
came to a stop behind him. Then something heavy slammed down on top of his
head, on the side, on the back. He hardly felt the third blow as he sagged
forward, his face coming down on the hard ground by the foot of one of the
soldiers. The last thing he

saw was the figure in silver stepping between the two soldiers and stopping
above him. The man's sandals shone with the unmistakable blood-hued glint of
rubies. Then Blade stopped seeing or feeling anything.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When Blade drifted back to consciousness, there were aches and pains shooting
through every part of his head. There was also the same silver-robed figure
looming over him, looking down at him. Blade looked up at the man and met his
gaze. The man was gray-bearded and fair-skinned, but except for that and his
silver robes, he resembled the On'ror so much they might have been brothers or
at least cousins.
Both were broad and fleshy in face and figure, and both had the look of men
long accustomed to power.
Not only long accustomed to power, but totally lacking in scruples when it
came to keeping it. Blade did not like thinking that his path and that of the
Zungans ran through two such men.
The man crossed both arms in front of his chest and smiled down at Blade. It
was the sort of gloating, triumphant smile Blade might have expected from such
a man, and it didn't make him feel any better. But he was determined not to
give the man any advantage, so he kept his mouth shut. The ache in his head
made that fairly easy.
"Well, Richard Blade of the English," said the man. Blade just managed to keep

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from stiffening in surprise at hearing his name. The man shot a hard look at
Blade, searching for some signs of surprise, then smiled again, as
unpleasantly as before.
"Well, Richard Blade of the English," he said again.
Blade found the strength to return the smile. "Are you a man or just a talking
animal? You don't seem to be able to say very much."
The smile on the man's face slipped for a moment. Blade felt that he had
scored. "I do not need to say very much, Blade. But if I wanted to hear you
talk, it would be easy. Oh, it would be so easy." The man licked his lips. It
was obvious what he had in mind as a "so easy" way of making Blade talk.
"But I am not free to do what the ghosts of my soldiers would like me to do.
No, I am not free. The men of Rulam want to see you in the arenas. They
greatly want to see you in the arenas. They have given me many firestones and
many lesser slaves for you. Oh, they have paid me well. The Ivory Tower will
be richer because of you. That is not something you enjoy hearing, is it? I
know you have been teaching the
Zungans how to fight a new way. It is a good way, too. When you are dying, you
can think that it is a good way. Oh, yes, I am a generous man. Even my enemies
can have their last thoughts."
The man rambled on like this for quite some time. Before too much longer Blade
was sure that he was dealing with a madman. Or, more accurately, that he was
being dealt with by one. But he still paid close attention to every one of the
man's words, searching them for any clues as to where he was and who the man
might be. While he listened, he also looked around him.
He was lying on his back on a wooden bedframe covered with a thin straw
mattress. His wrists and ankles were tied with heavy iron chain to staples set
in the bed. The chain would be too heavy to break, but could the staples be
pulled out?
He could move his head enough to see that the walls and ceiling of the room
were of heavy timber, darkened with age and smoke. Possibly he was in a
peasant's cottage, but it looked too well built for that. The door was low, no
more than five feet high, and as massive as the walls. The floor seemed to be

bare earth covered with straw-straw that had not been changed for a long time,
his nose told him.
There was only one light in the room, a guttering rush light dangling from the
ceiling. By its feeble glow
Blade again examined the man standing over him from head to toe. He appeared
to be unarmed, although a large black leather purse dangled from a black silk
sash around his ample midriff. But now Blade could make out more closely what
was dangling on the man's chest. It was a model of a cylindrical tower, with
the windows and doors clearly shown. It was a beautiful and delicate piece of
carving, with the yellow-white sheen of old ivory.
Blade remembered what he had heard of the ruling Priests of the Ivory Tower in
Kanda. Was this man one of them? It seemed likely. And it was obvious he
resented turning a man who had killed Kandan soldiers over to the Rulami as a
gladiator. Was there anything more to this resentment? Could something more
perhaps be made of this resentment, until Kanda and Rulam were at least mildly
at-odds over
Blade's disposal? Blade realized that he was grasping at straws, but also
realized that for the moment there was nothing much better that he could do.
How long the silver-robed man continued his half-incoherent monologue Blade
had no way of guessing.
The longer it continued, the more Blade was certain that the man was someone
high up among the Priests of the Ivory Tower. He spoke with authority, if not
arrogance, and his comments on the Rulami were seldom charitable.
Eventually the man ran out of things to say or perhaps out of breath. He
raised his arms in what might have been a parting blessing-or perhaps only a
stretching of cramped muscles. Then he said, "Farewell, Blade. I do not think

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I will be seeing you again, for you will never see Kanda, and I seldom leave
it.
Certainly I will never go to Rulam and walk among the barefaced women of that
city. But you-you will find favor in their eyes, I think." He turned and went
out. A moment later Blade heard the clank as a chain was attached to the
outside of the door, and the click of a key turning in a lock. He was truly a
prisoner.
The light was still burning, so Blade examined his chains more closely. The
staples were heavier than he had thought at first. He tried a few tentative
pulls, but soon realized that there was little hope of getting enough power
from the strength of only one arm. And there was even less hope of bringing
two arms to bear on one staple. The chains were too short.
Then he tried the iron wrist and ankle bands to which the chains were
attached. Perhaps he could find a flaw in one of them? But the iron was solid,
and all his jerking only made his wrists and ankles raw and red.
Very well, he was not going to escape from this particular prison. As long as
his captors were not going to kill him here and now, he didn't really need to
escape. Not for the first time his fighting qualities seemed to have destined
him for a career as a gladiator. He would wait until he reached Rulam, and
then look for ways of escape. At least as a gladiator he would be certain to
have easy access to weapons.
After deciding that, he was able to drift off to sleep. He would need to
conserve his strength.
A metallic clink from the door woke him with a start. The light still burned,
dimmer now but showing the chamber still empty. Somebody was outside, working
at the chain and lock. Somebody sent to kill him?
The Ivory Tower priest had not sounded very happy about sending him up to
Rulam. Perhaps he was going to cheat the Rulami by having Blade "killed while
attempting to escape."
The clinking came again the sound of a key turning in the lock. Then the
rattle of the chain being pulled through its fastenings. And finally to creak
of seldom-oiled hinges as the door swung open.

The figure that slipped into the room on noiseless feet was dressed in the
same silver robes and black sash as the Ivory Tower priest. But its head was
completely concealed by a red hood drawn tight over the face so that only the
eyes showed. It came across the room and stood over Blade, staring down at
him. Blade tried to read the expression in the eyes, but could not. Yet he
felt this one's examination was of quite a different kind from that of the
other priest. It was less hostile, more openly curious.
Then the figure raised its arms, and the silver sleeves fell back, revealing
slim hands in red gloves. The hands went up to the hood and jerked it suddenly
back. Blade's eyes opened in amazement. He would have sat up and stared if the
chains had let him. From out of the red hood, the face of a young woman stared
at him.
Young, and also beautiful. Long ash-blonde hair framed a finely chiseled face,
with wide blue eyes and an impudently up-tilted nose. The eyes were roaming
over Blade's naked body, lingering here and there with unmistakable interest.
Blade could not help grinning as he almost read the woman's mind. This seemed
to be a trip for meeting women who wanted to make love in strange places.
In a single graceful motion she knelt down beside Blade and brought her mouth
close to his right ear.
"Blade, listen to me," she whispered. "I am Sarnila, daughter to the High
Priest of Kanda."
Blade looked a question at her. She nodded. "Yes, the man in the silver robes
who was talking to you earlier. He does not want to turn you over to the
Rulami. He wants to have you killed and make it look like an attempt to
escape. I have come to help you really escape before my father's killers
arrive."

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Blade frowned. In a whisper as low as hers, he said, "Why should I trust you?
You are the High Priest's daughter. Why should you want me to escape?"
Something like a shudder of revulsion passed over Sarnila's delicate features.
"And I am also his mistress." She looked at Blade. "Yes, I see you think of
this as a Rulang or a Zungan would. But it is nothing unusual in Kanda, at
least not for the upper priests. They can have families when they are younger,
but when they are older they are supposed to be celibate." Sarnila looked as
if she wanted to spit on the floor. "But they are still men. And their
daughters can be relied on not to talk. So they make their daughters their
mistresses and keep them almost as slaves. There are a hundred or more young
women in Kanda who have never known any man but their fathers. Their old, fat,
half-impotent fathers!"
This time she did spit on the floor.
She took one glove off now and ran her hand over Blade's body. "You are a
warrior. Your body feels like that of a warrior. Do you know how many warriors
there are in Kanda? Real warriors, not just slave catchers and slave guards
and slave beaters? Only a handful. And yet every fat priest and merchant
thinks that by keeping his women behind veils and behind lock and bars, he is
being a man. Even the
Zungans are wiser than that!"
The hand kept moving as she talked, and suddenly closed around Blade's
genitals. It did not take him long to respond to the pressure. Sarnila's mouth
widened in a smile as she watched Blade's arousal make itself clear.
"Do you know how long it takes the High Priest to get stiff that way?" she
asked. It was a question obviously intended to go unanswered.
Blade had a more practical question of his own. "Aren't you going to get me
unchained if we're going to make love?"

Sarnila laughed. "No, Blade. I don't trust you that much. You might just run
off into the darkness if I let you go now. Then I would never know what the
love of a man and a warrior is like. Never." She patted the purse that hung
from her belt. "I have a file in here. I could get the keys to your chains,
but it is a good, hard file. It will have you free when I am ready for you to
be free." Her voice held some of her father's arrogance as she said this.
Blade sighed, more in frustration than in passion. He did not look forward to
being used as the object of
Sarnila's lust and vengeance. He was more than slightly angry at her distrust.
But he had to admit she was right. If he were free now, no power and no woman
could keep him from heading out of that door and south toward Zungan territory
as fast as his legs would carry him. That brought another question to his
mind.
"Did the Zungans who were with me escape from the Rulami soldiers?"
"I will tell you that also afterward," she said sharply. But he noticed that
her own breathing was beginning to come a little faster. He could see one of
the blue veins under the pale skin of her temples pulsing and jumping.
He was fully aroused now, but her hands still kept moving. Her skill was
remarkable. He knew that in another minute he would be fighting for control.
And a minute after that he would lose the fight. Sarnila would not like that.
Odds were, she would abandon any plan to help his escape. Blade realized his
freedom depended on his self-control.
The first minute passed, and Blade found himself clenching his teeth and his
fists. Then suddenly Sarnila's hands stopped their maddeningly skilled and
delicate work. She undid her sash. A quick jerk, and the robe flew through the
air and landed on the floor. Under it she was wearing only a semitransparent
shift.
A quick wriggle, and she was entirely bare.
Naked, Blade saw that Sarnila was younger than he had thought. Her breasts
were perfect but shallow cones, with small pink nipples. Her stomach was flat
and hard, with only a faint crease above the sparse growth of darker hair that

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furred her pubic triangle. She stood before him posing and posturing for a few
moments. The play of her supple young muscles under the light would have been
beautiful under other circumstances. Now Blade's mind was screaming only,
"Stop playing around and get on with it!" Now that the stroking hands were
gone, the strain of waiting, of listening for the fatal knock on the door, was
getting to him. He wondered if he would fall short of her demands through
failure instead of haste, with the same disastrous results.
Finally the slow dance came to an end. In a single swift and graceful motion
she swung herself astride
Blade, then lowered herself onto him. As her wetness and tightness took him
in, Blade knew he could stop worrying about failure. The slow steady friction
as she rose up and down on him was bringing him back to peak, regardless of
the tensions preying on his mind.
Then he forgot all about the tensions and was aware only of Sarnila, her
endless motions, the little jerk at the end of each cycle, the little gasps
from her half-parted lips. Those veins were almost dancing now.
Her hands played a steady tattoo on the muscles of his chest, plucking at the
hairs. Her own hair tossed about wildly, whipping about the white shoulders,
vagrant strands falling down over the neat little nose.
Now her movements were speeding up of their own accord, as her body slipped
out of control. Her head was thrown back until her hair hung almost vertically
down her back, the ends brushing her neat buttocks. Her mouth was wide open,
the moans coming louder now. Blade hoped the walls and door of

this room were thick enough to muffle the sound. Her skin was beginning to
feel flushed and damp.
Then the first spasm took her, throat muscles and pelvic muscles contracting
and jerking and her wetness suddenly flowing harder. A second spasm, and a
third; with Blade still firm as she jerked up and down on him. He was biting
his lip to keep from groaning with the strain of fighting for self-control. He
felt himself losing the fight, abandoned it, spurted into her with a gasp. She
jerked and writhed for a fourth time, then collapsed on Blade's chest, fingers
still moving idly through the hair on it.
Blade had never before worried about his own willingness to relax and even
sleep in such moments after release. But now he knew he had to force his body
and his mind into action, fast action, and soon. He reached up a hand to the
limit of the chain and chucked Sarnila under the chin.
"Have I given you what you wanted?"
He thought he heard her murmur, "Yes," and was almost certain he heard an
equally faint "More."
Blade shook his head. "No, Sarnila. No more. I must escape. Now. When I have
escaped, perhaps I
can come back and take you away to where there are many warriors. But first I
must get out of here!"
He pointed at her purse. "You said you had a file. Give it to me." He made his
voice as firm and harsh as he could without risking being overheard outside
the chamber.
He had to repeat his words several times. But eventually they got through the
erotic fog that still enveloped Sarnila. Slowly she rolled off him, knelt down
on the floor, and rummaged the file out of her purse. It was a massive object,
as tough as she had said, and long and heavy enough to make a good improvised
weapon. That was somewhat encouraging, but Blade knew that he would have
little chance of getting clean away except by stealth. But at least he could
take a few more of the slavers with him if it came to a fight. He took the
file from Sarnila-almost snatched it, in fact-and went to work on the staples.
The iron was tough, but the file ground and chewed its way through the staples
with encouraging speed.
And also with a discouraging amount of noise. Half a dozen times Blade
stopped, listening, certain that the uproar he was making must be waking up

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everybody within a half mile and bringing them at the run to investigate. The
staple holding the chain to his right wrist gave way. He turned over and went
to work on the one for the left wrist.
While Blade was filing away, Sarnila was kneeling on the floor. She had not
bothered to put her clothes back on, and Blade could see goose flesh on her
bare skin. She still seemed half in a trance. He hoped she would get her head
clear before the time came for him to escape. He did not like the thought of
leaving her in this condition.
As he finished the left-hand staple and started freeing his feet, she rose
slowly and began pulling her robes on. Alertness began creeping back into her
eyes. In the middle of his filing and scraping, Blade turned to her and said,
"Remember, I asked you about the other Zungans with me. Did they escape or
not?"
She was pulling her robe over her head at that moment, and her voice came out
half-muffled. "Seven of them did. One was killed outright, one died later. The
others all ran away. I thought Zungan warriors never ran away-"
"Zungan warriors are learning many new things," said Blade. "They will be much
more dangerous because of this. The warriors who ran away will be back someday
soon, with many companions. And then it will be the Rulami-" he nearly added
"-and the Kandans," but stopped himself in time "-who run

away or die."
Sarnila's head popped out of the neck of her robe. "That is good. I do not
like the Rulami."
Blade looked at her. "I thought the Rulami treated their women well. Why do
you not like them?"
"They treat their women well. The women of the Rulami have great power, from
Queen Roxala on down. But they do not treat other people or other people's
women at all well. There was a time when they even made slaves of the women of
Kanda, the way they do now with the Zungans. The Rulami are very proud and
haughty, and in their eyes all should go down in the dust and kiss their
feet."
Blade was taking mental notes at a furious clip. He would not need to spend
any time deepening the animosity between Kanda and Rulam, if she was telling
the truth. It already ran deep enough, as deep as he could hope for. His job
would be to find some way of exploiting it. A job that he could do, he
reminded himself, only if he escaped. He resolutely shut his ears to the noise
he was making, and kept working with the file.
Soon the staple holding his right foot was gone, and the one on the left was
cut half through. He was beginning to think of clothing, and how to get some.
He was just about to ask Sarnila about this, when he heard footsteps and
voices outside the door.
Sarnila froze, and her mouth opened in a soundless scream of terror. Blade did
not and could not pay any attention to her. His reflexes and training took
over. With a tremendous flesh-gouging lunge he jerked the remaining chain. The
half-filed staple snapped. Blade sprang off the bed, clutching the file in his
hand.
Then he darted across the room and flattened himself against the wall, behind
where the opening door would swing. If the people outside opened it just far
enough... Now he jerked a beckoning thumb at
Sarnila, but she was too paralyzed with terror to move a step. He was
calculating if he would have the time to step over and grab her, when the door
squealed and groaned open.
Half a dozen Kandan soldiers with the High Priest at their head stamped into
the room in a crash of booted feet and a clank of armor and weapons. They took
two steps, then stopped at the sight of the empty bed and Sarnila standing
numb with fright beside it. For a moment they were as paralyzed as she was. In
that moment, Blade moved.
He came out from behind the door in two silent steps and sprang at the High

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Priest, stabbing with the file toward the exposed back of the man's thick
neck. But a soldier standing just behind the High Priest started to turn as
Blade struck. Blade could not halt his stroke; the file clanged off the man's
helmet. The soldier staggered and fell against the High Priest, who spun
around with surprising agility for a man his size and weight.
"You!" he gasped as he saw Blade. Then he hoisted up his robes and dashed for
the door. The soldiers flung themselves out of his way, then re-formed behind
him to block Blade's path. They were smiling.
After all, there were a half dozen of them with swords, and only one of him,
with nothing but a file.
Not for long. A soldier lunged at Blade, and he brought the file down on the
man's arm so hard the sword dropped from his hand. Blade dove for it,
straight-arming the man in the groin as he also sought to retrieve his weapon.
He snatched up the sword and returned it to its previous owner-in the thigh,
just below his armor. Then he flipped the sword sideways at a sword arm rising
for a stroke, and another sword clattered on the floor, held in a severed
hand. The four intact soldiers backed off, staring with dawning fear at the
giant naked figure of Blade.

He plunged into their ranks again, beating down two thrusts but not killing or
wounding this time. He snatched the statue-like Sarnila off her feet and
tucked her under one arm. She was light enough so that he could carry her that
way with no trouble. He turned and faced the soldiers.
"Just stay there for a while, friends. I've got the High Priest's daughter."
He did not plan on holding her a hostage, but the soldiers couldn't know that.
They backed obediently against the walls and lowered their swords. Blade
turned again and ran out of the chamber.
Outside he found himself in a long, narrow lane between two rows of stoutly
timbered wooden huts.
"Where are we?" he asked Sarnila. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
He shook her gently.
"Where are we? I am going to take you to Zunga with me, and I want to know how
to get there."
Her face collapsed and she began to cry. Blade wondered about the wisdom of
the promise he had just made to encourage her. He was far from sure that
Sarnila would be able to handle herself in a long flight.
The courage she had shown in coming to his but seemed to have entirely gone.
A moment later the question became irrelevant. Pounding down the lane in a
glare of torches came a mob of Kandan soldiers, the High Priest again visible
among them-well in the rear, Blade noticed. Blade whirled about. Beyond the
huts on both sides rose high walls with spiked tops. And down the lane from
the other direction a dozen men with Rulami shields were approaching. Blade
took all of one second to decide, then dashed straight at the Rulami. Escape
was no longer possible, but with the Rulami he and
Sarnila might live a little longer and find other chances.
If Blade had wanted to fight the Rulami, he could have taken out half a dozen
of them at least. His charge out of the darkness took them by surprise and all
their training did not keep them from flinching.
But he did not want to fight them. He held his sword point down and shouted,
"Save me from the treachery of the Kandans. They mean to kill me and cheat you
of your money!" He was gambling that the
High Priest's description of the deal over him was correct.
In a moment he saw that it was. The Rulami drew their swords and glared, not
at him, but at the
Kandans coming up behind him. The Rulami officer growled contemptuously at
Blade, "get behind us, boy. We'll take care of those priests' pimps." Blade
led Sarnila through the soldiers as they swung into a formation six-men wide
and two deep across the lane.
The High Priest was in the lead now as the Kandans charged up. But he stopped

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abruptly as the Rulami presented a dozen drawn swords. The officer stepped
forward and barked, "Halt, Priest. We don't like your kind of dealing. If you
take one more step after this man-"
"If you draw a single drop of blood from me I'll-!"
"You'll what?" sneered the officer. "What can Kanda do to us or for us that we
couldn't do as well on our own? You think you've got a real city, don't you?"
The officer spat on the path. "All you've got is the
Ivory Tower and a huddle of houses. And those boys and old men you call
soldiers." He spat again.
Blade wondered if the Rulami officer wasn't going too far, deliberately trying
to bring on a battle. That was fine with him, of course. The more the Rulami
and Kandans were at each other's throats, the better.
And a fight now might even give him and Sarnila a chance to escape.
Apparently the High Priest's thick skull contained enough brains to make him
realize this. He took a deep breath, and in his turn spat on the path. "All
right, you no-balls Rulami men, you can have him! You paid for him. Get him
out of my sight, get him out of Kanda, get yourselves out of Kanda! But give
me

that woman."
"Your daughter?" The officer's voice held a sneer of total contempt.
"Daughter" might have been the foulest word in the whole language, the way he
said it.
The High Priest said nothing. He merely shoved his way forward through the
Rulami soldiers and grabbed Sarnila by the arm. The girl cringed and whimpered
and tried to pull away. Blade took a step forward, and found three Rulami
swords aimed at his chest. "None of that, boy," said the officer. "We don't
want any more fighting over what isn't our business."
The High Priest kicked Sarnila's feet out from under her and dragged her by
the hair out into the open.
He let go of her hair, and she dropped to the ground with a thud. He kicked
her in the stomach, and she doubled up and rolled back and forth moaning.
The High Priest's face was purple with fury and hatred; he was past caring who
heard what. He looked down at Sarnila and snarled, "You little bitch! You
whore! You man-woman!" That last seemed to be the ultimate insult. Although
his mouth kept opening and shutting, he couldn't find anything more to say.
Instead he bent and with powerful hands ripped the robes from Sarnila's body.
She made a futile effort to roll over on her stomach as her body was bared,
then an equally futile effort to cover herself with her hands. As she lifted
her right hand, the High Priest stamped down on it with one booted foot. Blade
heard the crunch of bone, and Sarnila's scream. If a half dozen soldiers
hadn't had a firm grip on him, he would have dashed forward and strangled the
High Priest with his bare hands. As it was, he could only heave and jerk and
swear that he would have the High Priest's blood for this.
"You wanted to take her away with you, did you, Blade? Is that why you're so
angry? Well, well. You may indeed have my blood someday. High Priests can die
or be killed like men. Oh, yes, we can. But first I will have her blood." The
High Priest leaped into the air, with more agility than Blade would have
thought possible in such a man. He came down squarely on Sarnila's chest, both
feet smashing down on her ribs with a terrible crunching noise. Sarnila heaved
once, then lay still, blood oozing from her mouth and nose.
Blade took one look at the mess the High Priest's weight had made of his
daughter's body, then had to turn away and be very sick. It did not last long.
There was not that much in his stomach. Finally the
Rulami officer swatted him across the shoulders with the flat of his sword and
said roughly, "Come on, boy, and stop puking. You'll see worse in the arena."
Blade allowed himself to be led away. For the moment he felt too drained to
resist.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN

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The High Priest was correct in his prediction. Blade never saw Kanda or the
Ivory Tower. After his taste of Kandan habits, he didn't feel that he was
missing anything. If he ever saw Kanda, he hoped it would be at the head of a
Zungan army. And if he was snatched back to Home Dimension before he could
lead a march on Kanda, he hoped the Zungans would take care of the matter
themselves.
Where Blade had been confined turned out to be a sort of trading post. There
the Rulami exchanged the rubies from their mines and the ivory their hunters
had collected for slaves taken by the Kandan raiders.
The slaves were chained into coffles and marched north.
Blade was not put into a coffle. Apparently he was considered too high-quality
merchandise to be forced to tramp along the road to Rulam with chains at his
neck and ankles. He was chained, to be sure,

with chains even heavier than the ones in the hut. But instead of being put
into the coffle, he was loaded feet first into a canvas bag. Then they tied
heavy ropes around the bag. Finally, they slung Blade, bag and all, onto the
back of one of the Ivory People, like a saddlebag on a horse.
Blade rode trussed this way in the bag for six full days, as the caravan
tramped north. There were about a dozen of the tame Ivory People, nearly two
hundred slaves, a guard of fifty-odd soldiers, and an assortment of wagons.
The trip would have taken less than half the time if the Ivory People had been
traveling alone; Blade knew from the Zungans that the strange beasts could
cover sixty to seventy miles a day without strain. Clumsy as they looked, they
were surprisingly fast, and their endurance was enormous. Each night they
stopped in clearings by the side of the road. Blade was always taken out of
the sack and given water, food, and exercise. He did not need to be forced to
take any of these. He was as determined as any of the Rulami that he would be
in top condition when he reached the city. Once they even offered him a slave
girl from the coffle and a tent in which to enjoy her in privacy. Blade turned
down that offer. The brief episode with Sarnila and her fate afterward had
left an ugly taste in his mouth.
On the morning of the seventh day the sun was only just clearing the treetops
when shouts went up from the head of the caravan. Rulam was in sight, and
within an hour even Blade in his sack could see its towers and walls crowning
the ridge a few miles ahead. The road was becoming more crowded now.
Farmers' carts and occasional patrols of soldiers rumbled and tramped along in
the dust, giving way as the caravan ploughed through. The bridges over the
occasional streams were no longer rickety collections of old timber, but solid
works of dressed and mortared stone, as wide as the road.
The officer leaned down from his saddle far enough to be able to talk to Blade
without shouting. The officer's name was Horan, and in the past six days Blade
had developed a thorough distaste for the man.
Horun was a supercilious palace soldier, alternately brutal and condescending
toward slaves-especially
Zungan ones.
"We'll be home in a couple hours, Blade," said Horun.
"I haven't heard any orders on it yet, but if custom is any guide, the queen
will be wanting to look you over."
"Queen Roxala?"
Horun nodded. "Indeed. She's a collector of things rare and fine. Animals,
birds, jewels-she's got enough firestones to fill a river barge. And men.
Arena men particularly. She picks the best fighters from each new lot of
slaves for her personal arena teams. And you'll be coming in with a reputation
running ahead of you. If I were as sure of making general as you ought to be
of getting picked for the queen's team, I'd be a happy man."
"Are her teams treated well?"
"Oh, nothing but the best for them. Slaves they may be, but they live better
than nine out of ten freemen in Rulam. The best meat and wine, girls any time

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they want them, baths and doctors waiting for them when they come in from the
arena. And some of them get a real extra bonus."
"What kind?" From what Blade had heard of Roxala and from what he could see in
Horun's face, Blade had a fairly good idea. But he wanted to be certain.
Horun practically simpered, and dropped his voice to just above a whisper.
"Oh, Roxala has a roving eye, and picks out the best of the stable for her
bed. As long as they aren't Zungans, anyway. She'd die

before she bedded with one of those smelly black savages. But the others, like
you." Horun licked his lips. "They say she's worth it just as a woman."
"What does the king say about this?"
Horun dropped his voice still further. "King Meptor doesn't like it a bit. If
the laws of Rulam allowed it, he'd have put Roxala away years ago. As it is,
all he can do is poison or murder one of her favorites every so often. These
days he doesn't even have much time for that. War preparations." Horun's eyes
showed that he suddenly realized he was saying too much to a mere slave. He
swung back up to his formal pose, and was silent as the caravan began climbing
the hill toward the city.
Meanwhile, Blade was turning what Horun had said over in his mind. So Queen
Roxala had a taste for gladiators-including a bedroom taste? That was
something he had put to good use in the past. Risky, but so far he had always
come out on top. Anything within reason that could keep him alive and give him
freedom of movement was worth grabbing.
And war preparations? War with whom, and for what? Rulam and Kanda were on bad
terms, but that bad? He hoped so. Or was King Kleptor perhaps thinking of an
all-out war against the Zungans? That was something to watch out for. But
there was nothing he could do about it now. He turned his head as far as he
could and stared at the approaching city.
The walls stretched for miles along the top of the ridge, forty and fifty feet
high, built of massive blocks of stone and crowned with square towers every
hundred yards or so. Behind the wall, more towers rose black and gray against
the blue sky. So did columns of smoke from dozens of chimneys, as bakeries,
forges, and tanneries settled down to the day's work. The breeze blowing from
the city carried the smell of all of these and much more to Blade's nose.
Dorkalu was a village compared to Rulam. Whatever the
Zungans might someday do to Kanda and its priests, they would be hard put to
do anything to Rulam inside its walls.
As the caravan approached a massively towered gate, someone hailed them from
the gatehouse.
"Horun! Do you bear the prisoner Richard Blade of the English?"
Horun shouted back. "Yes, I do."
"The queen has left orders that he be brought to the Summer Palace at once."
Horun looked down at
Blade, with a lewd grin on his face.
Then Horun rapped his mount sharply on the right side of its head with his
goad. The animal swung ponderously to the left, turning away from the gate,
and lumbered along the wall. The rest of the caravan vanished through the
gate, while Horun goaded the animal to a lumbering trot that kicked up a cloud
of dust behind it. They kept on at that pace for a good two miles, until they
came to a sprawling gray-brown palace, and rode into its fore courtyard. Horun
brought his mount to a stop just inside the gate. A dozen slaves ran out to
help him dismount and unload Blade.
After carrying Blade like a piece of furniture into the cellar of a nearby
building, the men unwrapped him.
They left the chains on, however. Word about Blade's qualities indeed had run
on ahead. Chains and all, they bathed him, shaved him, oiled and perfumed and
pumiced and scraped him, massaged him-the process went on for what seemed like
hours. Blade began to feel like a prize bull being groomed for a cattle show.

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Horun watched the process with a continuous grin flickering across his thin
face, openly amused at
Blade's mounting annoyance. "Don't fight it, Blade. If you aren't looking your
best, the queen may turn you down. And if she turns you down for her team, you
can be damned sure she won't let anybody else grab you for theirs. You'll be
on your way to the firestone mines before you can turn around. They say a man
is lucky to live a year there-and usually wishes he could die after a single
day."
Horun ran on. Indicating the slaves scurrying around the chamber, he grinned.
"Look at those poor bastards. Practically wetting their pants for fear you'll
have one hair out of place or one bit of skin not oiled up sleek. They're
right, too. Roxala'd have their backs striped if you did. You, boy!" He
shouted at the nearest slave, who stopped as if he had run into a brick wall.
"Turn around!" The slave turned his back toward Blade, who started counting
the welts and scars criss-crossing it. He got up to fifty before another
barked word from Horun sent the slave back to his business. Blade decided that
it would be a pleasure to kill Horun, if the time ever came.
Eventually the slaves finished their work. Blade was dressed in a
tight-fitting loin-guard and given an empty sheath to hook over it. "There'll
be a sword in that sheath soon enough," said Horun. Then, with a bawdy
chuckle, he added, "And your other sword may be in another sheath even before
that. Lucky man."
Now a squad of soldiers tramped in, and Horun unlocked Blade's chains. The
soldiers surrounded him with drawn swords, and he was marched out of the
cellar. They went along a damp, twisting corridor, each section seeming
gloomier than the last, for what seemed like hours. Finally their journey came
to an end as they mounted a flight of stairs and Horun pushed open a massive
door. Sunlight poured in, for a moment dazzling Blade's eyes. The soldiers
paid no attention to his stumblings, but shoved him into the open.
Slowly his eyes readjusted to the daylight, and he saw that he was standing in
the center of another large courtyard-no, garden would be a better
description. It was nearly as large as a football field. Where it was not
covered with lush green grass manicured to almost billiard-table smoothness,
white gravel walks led through rainbow-colored masses of flowers. Their scents
filled the air, striking Blade hard enough to almost make his head swim. After
the austere plains and the foul smells of his journey, such an overpowering
mass of perfumes seemed unhealthy. He felt almost ill.
"The queen's private garden," said Horun. "I wonder if you'll be the only
thing on show today-no, I see somebody else coming."
Out from the shadows of one of the porticos around the garden came a line of
slaves. They were struggling with something immensely long and thick, done up
in a version of the canvas sack that had carried Blade. Whatever it was, they
were sweating with the effort of carrying it, and wide-eyed with fear. They
kept on coming, until there were nearly two score of them. The thing they
carried seemed to nearly sixty feet long. After the slaves came yet another
squad of the ubiquitous soldiers, carrying a thick iron collar, a massive
chain, and an iron post pointed at one end. By the time all this hardware was
gathered together, Blade hardly needed to hear the explosive hiss that sounded
from inside the bag to know what the slaves were carrying.
Then Horun jabbed Blade sharply in the ribs and pointed up toward a
second-story balcony half-screened by the tops of a quartet of small trees. A
woman had stepped out onto the balcony, and even in the shadows she made an
impressive sight. Tall-nearly six feet-with a great foaming mane of blue-black
hair pouring down her back. She wore a golden gown that above the waist might
have been sprayed on, so tightly did it cling to her luxuriantly curved
figure. In her hair sparkled a thin tiara of rubies.

"The queen?" whispered Blade.

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"Yes. But don't pay any attention to her until the trumpeters blow. That's the
sign that she's officially present. Until then we treat her as just part of
the scenery. A very nice part of the scenery," added
Horun.
Blade kept his eyes fixed on the woman nonetheless. A moment later two men in
yellow tunics and green tabards joined the queen on the balcony, each carrying
a yard-long brass trumpet. They raised these to their lips, and blew a long
raw blast.
Blade winced at the sound. Then from behind him the hiss exploded again. This
time it did not die away.
And then he heard the clank and clash of iron, scrapings, thumpings-and a
chorus of mad screams of panic.
Blade whirled around. His eyes flicked from the queen, frozen motionless on
her balcony, to the great snake rearing up in the middle of the scattering
slaves. Horun shouted an order, and several of the soldiers ran forward,
drawing their swords. But instead of attacking the snake, they waded into the
ranks of the slaves, slashing and thrusting. The slaves were screaming in
agony now, falling and writhing on the ground. Some of them abruptly stopped
screaming as the snake writhed over them, its tons of scaled mass crushing the
last bits of life out of them.
Blade could not contain himself. "You idiot!" he roared at Horun. "Get that
snake and let the slaves alone!"
Horun whirled and backhanded Blade across the face. "Keep your mouth shut,
boy. This is just another slave trick. I don't need you to tell me how to
handle it."
Four soldiers were holding onto Blade, so he did not lunge forward, pick up
Horun, and break the officer in two with his bare hands. He watched the snake
slowly coiling and uncoiling itself, as the fact penetrated to its tiny brain
that it was free. Its head bobbed up and down like a yoyo, sometimes rising
twenty feet above the ground, sometimes lying flat on the grass.
Now the head rose again, and swiveled toward the balcony. The snake's blank
green eyes flickered open as they caught sight of Roxala, still frozen by the
railing. Blade's mind was yelling at the queen, "Get back inside, you stupid
woman! Don't just stand there gaping like an idiot!" He knew that in another
second he was going to shout it out loud.
Then the snake moved. Perhaps it was cunning, perhaps it was blind rage. But
the huge head shot forward and then up, rising under the balcony, smashing
into it with a tremendous clang. The queen staggered and went sprawling. The
head rose again with another clang. Blade heard the screech of metal twisting.
A third time the snake drove its head like a battering ram into the balcony.
This time the whole balcony pulled free of the wall. Balcony, queen, and
trumpeters plunged down fifteen feet to land with a thundering crash on the
stone walk. The snake reared up and back, then swung forward again. Now its
jaws opened, revealing foot-long teeth and a tongue the thickness of a fire
hose. The tongue flicked in and out, the eyes stared down at the victims
below. The queen lay sprawled on the walk, motionless, her gown half ripped
off by the fall.
Horun seemed as stunned as his queen. The officer stood motionless. His mouth
kept opening and closing, but no sound came out.
"Do something, you useless little palace pimp!" roared Blade. "Don't just
stand there." But Horun still did

not move, nor did he give any orders to his soldiers. Both soldiers and slaves
had scattered in panic.
Some had hidden under the bushes, others had vanished into the porticoes and
peeped nervously out from behind the pillars. The four soldiers holding Blade
had not fled, however. Either they had their orders, or like Horun they were
too paralyzed with fear to move an inch.
Suddenly Blade slumped backward, catching the four men holding him by

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surprise. He let himself fall to the grass, feeling himself slide through the
soldiers' hands. He felt the last set of hands let go-and suddenly jackknifed
at the waist and shot to his feet, bowling over the nearest soldier. Before
the others could reach for him or draw their swords, he leaped high over a
line of bushes. Ignoring Horun, he ran for the iron stake lying on the grass.
He saw the snake's head swaying still, but dipping lower and lower toward the
sprawled bodies on the walk. Blade knew he would first have to draw the snake
away from the queen. To fight it where it was might kill the queen just as
surely as letting the snake close those foot-long teeth on her.
Blade reached the stake. He lifted it, feeling his muscles strain under the
weight, then jerked. Chain and collar flew off the ground, into the air, and
nearly caught in the branches of a tree. Before they came down, Blade spread
his legs wide for balance and began whirling the stake around his head. The
chain and collar swung through the air like a whip. The massive collar sailed
straight at the snake's back and slammed into it with a crunching thud.
Instantly the snake forgot all about the victims almost in its jaws. It reared
up with a savage hiss until almost half its length was off the ground. Its
head and neck twisted and lashed about, searching for the attacker. Again
Blade swung his iron whip. Again the collar cracked into the snake's neck, ten
feet below the head. The head dipped, and Blade saw the huge eyes focus on
him, glaring at him.
He had its attention. Now he had to fight it. He swung the collar a third
time, aiming straight at the vast flat head. The jaws snapped shut and the
collar smashed into the scaled nose, just above the nostrils. The jaws opened
again, dripping foam, as the snake shook its head back and forth. Blade
reversed the stake in a quick shift of hands. Now the chain and collar lay on
the grass and he held the stake out with its point toward the snake. A
clumsier spear he could perhaps imagine, but he hoped he'd never have to fight
with it. Certainly not against a monster like this.
The snake lunged, jaws open, hissing like a leaky boiler. Blade danced to one
side, jabbing downward as the head flashed past, aiming for the eyes. The
point slammed into the scales with a jar that half-numbed Blade's arms. The
snake quivered all over, but its recovery was as fast as ever. A second
stroke, a second thrust with the post, and a second recovery. The snake was as
fast as before. The massive head showed only a few broken scales to mark where
Blade had struck.
Perhaps the throat would be a better target. This time Blade crouched low as
the snake came in, thrusting upward. The scaly flank tore along his legs,
rasping the skin off like a file. But he felt scales crunch and skin part
under the thrusting post. The snake jerked its head back, rearing high. This
time there was a trickle of blood flowing down the gleaming scales of its
neck.
Blade crouched again, shifted aside again, stabbed again. More blood flowed
across the scales. He reversed the post, holding it as a club. The snake came
in again, aiming low, seeing Blade crouching before it as he had already done
twice. This time it would finish off this annoying interference with its meal!
As the snake came in, Blade leaped to his feet and swung the post down at the
full stretch of his arms, with all his strength. Again the jar was rumbling,
but the snake jerked and heaved throughout its full sixty-plus feet. For a
moment it was motionless. Blade reversed the post again, whipping the hundred
and

more pounds of iron through a complete circle. Then he stabbed point-down at
one of the eyes. This time the thrust went home. The eye burst apart in a
spurting of blood and greenish slime.
The hiss that came out of the gaping mouth now had a rasp that set Blade's
teeth on edge. Then the snake lashed its head and twenty feet of its body
sideways. Blade jerked the post up and held it out, but the whiplash smashed
the iron back against his chest and knocked him sprawling. The scales flayed

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more skin off his arms and chest and stomach, and he felt as though all of his
ribs had been smashed.
Blade lay on his back, fighting for breath, while the snake reared up again,
swaying back and forth. It was half-blinded and from its slow motions more
than half-stunned. It had taken punishment. But so had
Blade. He wondered if he could outlast the monster, in what had now become a
contest of endurance.
As the snake twisted its head this way and that, Blade lurched to his feet.
With a desperate heave of his arms, he lifted the post, point forward. The
snake's head loomed in front of him like a mottled brown and black wall now
slimy with blood. He lifted the post high over his head. Then he thrust it
home with all the strength left in his arms. Again he felt scales crack and
flesh tear, and this time a great gout of blood spurted out and all over him.
The snake toppled sideways and thudded down onto the grass. Then it gave a
final, convulsive jerk, sweeping Blade to the ground again, and lay still.
Gradually Blade felt his strength returning. He relaxed his death grip on the
post and sat up. Seeing that all the soldiers were still frozen with surprise
and terror, he stood up and walked over to where Queen
Roxala lay on the walk. Looking down at her, he found his original impressions
of a ripe and mature beauty confirmed. More than confirmed, for in the fall
the queen's tight gown had burst from the neck down to the waist. A bruise
extended in a purple line across her ribs where the railing of the balcony had
caught her. And her magnificent breasts were fully bared.
As Blade stood looking down at the queen, the courtyard gradually came back to
life. Horun barked orders, and the soldiers began to rout the slaves out of
their refuges, kicking, cursing, and occasionally sword-whipping them. Horun
himself drew the sword that had stayed in its scabbard all during Blade's
death struggle with the snake, then came over to Blade.
"All right, Blade. Quit staring at the queen. If she saw you doing it now,
she'd have your balls cut off."
He jerked his thumb at the center of the courtyard. "Get back where you
belong."
The harsh sound of Horun's voice made Roxala's eyes flicker open. Then they
widened as she saw the two men standing over her. She looked down at herself,
nodded, but made no effort to close her gaping gown. Then she looked at Blade
and said, "This is the Richard Blade of the English I asked to have brought?"
"Yes," said Horun quickly. "An unruly and bad-tempered slave my queen. He
tried to escape while I
was killing the snake. I had him beaten by the soldiers. I can have him beaten
again if you wish."
But Roxala was not listening to Horun. Her eyes roamed up and down Blade's
body, noting his muscles, other parts of him, and his bloody and battered
appearance. Then they moved away from him to the body of the snake lying
beyond in the grass. And then she burst out laughing, pointing first at Horun,
then at the snake, then at Blade.
"You killed that monster, little captain? You killed it? You couldn't kill a
kitten if you had a whole squad of soldiers at your back. No, you could kill a
kitten. It's little and helpless and weak, and you like stamping on the little
and the helpless and the weak. But that snake wasn't any of these things. You
killed it? Richard Blade of the English killed it. The signs are all over him.
Smell them, Horun, if you can smell

anything through that perfume you bathe in."
"But-" and then Horun stopped. His brains weren't the best, but apparently
they were good enough to keep him from the folly of arguing with Queen Roxala.
The queen grinned. "That's better, Horun. Keep your mouth shut, and then you
won't have a chance to put your foot in it. You'd look even sillier than you
do now, standing around on one foot." She turned her gaze onto Blade. "Well,
Richard Blade of the English. I wanted to see what kind of fighting man you

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were. But I think you have already proved that you are a good one. I wish very
much I could have seen you kill that snake. Now you are going to come with me.
I will see that you get bathed and cared for."
"Your Majesty," exploded Horun, "this is a fresh-caught slave and a terrible
warrior. He's not safe yet!
Are you-?"
"Are you going to teach me my business, Horun? If you are, perhaps you have
some lessons coming also. And Blade is not a slave. Not for long, at any rate.
He is a warrior. I will have him entered in the
Caste of Warriors. I have never had a free warrior to head my team of arena
men because there were none of mine worthy to be more than slaves. But now I
have a man." Roxala said the last word as though it were a title of honor. The
way she looked at him left Blade in no doubt that it had a good many other
implications as well.
"Ho, slaves!" Roxala's voice carried all over the courtyard like the blast of
a trumpet. A dozen slaves practically tumbled over each other running to
answer her call. She pointed at Blade and said, "Take this warrior Richard
Blade of the English and have him bathed. I will send the surgeon to him
later." She spun about and strode away, still without bothering to fasten her
gown. Obviously in her eyes the slaves were not human enough to require any
modesty before them.
As the slaves gathered around Blade, Horun pushed through their ranks and
shoved his glaring face into
Blade's. "The queen is going to do well by you, it seems. A warrior, yet. But
remember, warriors can die just like slaves. I hope I get a chance to remind
you of that, boy. How I hope so!"
Blade smiled blandly into Horun's flushed face. "Don't hope too much, little
captain. But don't worry. If I
ever want a few minutes' easy amusement for myself and the queen, I'll look
you up." He turned his back on Horun and let the slaves escort him away.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Queen Roxala's bath would not have been out of place in a luxury apartment in
London. The sunken marble tub was almost large enough to be used as a swimming
pool. Thick gold-colored woolen rugs covered the floor. Blade sank into them
up to his ankles as the slaves led him to the bath. He waited while a relay of
slave girls clad only in short trunks poured hot water from gilded bronze
buckets into the bath. Then he let himself be guided down the steps until the
water was lapping around his chin. He lay back, floating luxuriantly, feeling
the water sting as it cleaned his scrapes and abrasions and soothed his aching
muscles.
Looking up at the ceiling, he saw that it was covered in mosaic tiles. At
first he could not make out any patterns in the swirl of steam-fogged colors
above. Then gradually he realized he was looking at a spectacular, vivid, and
explicit series of erotic illustrations. He noticed that most of the women on
the ceiling, no matter what their poses, were full-figured and dark-haired.
They weren't exactly portraits of the queen, but as far as body type they all
might have been sisters. A new variation on decadence, thought Blade. Have
your erotic fantasies done so you can look at them while you take your bath.
He

wondered if Roxala picked what she would do with her next partner from this
sexual catalogue in tile while she bathed.
Several of the slave girls now dove into the water with him, carrying sponges,
soaps, and pots of soothing ointments. They clustered around him, working away
industriously to scour and annoint him. It was as thorough a job as the slaves
in the cellar had done. What kept Blade from enjoying it more was the complete
lack of any life or spirit in the faces of the girls. They seemed completely
unaware of his maleness or their own near-nudity. Their joyless attentions to
him once more made him feel like a prize steer being groomed for showing.

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To see if he could put a little life into the proceedings, he gently patted
one of the girls in the appropriate place. She gasped and spun around to stare
at him. It was as though he had jabbed her with a red-hot iron. Her eyes were
filled, not with anger or indignation, but with raw fear. Were the girls
afraid of him-or was it just that Queen Roxala had a "hands off" rule for her
chosen studs?
Before Blade could ask any of the girls, the surgeon came in. He was at least
seventy and stooped with age and rheumatism. Moreover, he was ugly, not only
by nature but as a result of a series of scars that furrowed his cheeks and
neck.
"You are Richard Blade, warrior of the English and soon to be warrior of
Rulam?" The man's voice was high and quavering.
"I am."
"I am to examine you for your fitness in all things. Please lie down upon the
floor." As Blade did so, the surgeon opened a leather bag, and with his
gnarled hands began removing instruments from it.
In spite of his age, the surgeon's hands were skilled and swift in their
movements. The surgeon went over
Blade from head to toe, examining his abrasions and bruises with particular
care. He also paid particular attention to Blade's genitals, examining them
with such care that Blade began to wonder about the surgeon's sexual
preferences.
Finally the surgeon stood up. "You are a very fine physical specimen," he
said. Then he added, with the first trace of expression Blade had heard in his
voice, "Possibly even good enough to meet our queen's requirements for more
than a few months. For your sake, I hope so." The surgeon bent over until his
thin-lipped mouth was close to Blade's ear. "And for your sake, remember that
Queen Roxala is eaten up by jealousy. When she picks a man or a woman, that
man or woman is hers until she tires of them and has them killed."
"Woman?"
"Queen Roxala has a-wide-taste in pleasures, Blade." The surgeon's thin mouth
hardened. "Once she caught me with a girl she had picked for her own. I got
these." He pointed at his scars. "I would have been castrated if the girl
hadn't persuaded the queen that she had seduced me. So Roxala had the girl
tortured to death. Whips were the mildest part of it. Be careful, Blade. When
the queen is well satisfied, it is easier for all of us."
Blade nodded, keeping his face expressionless. He was beginning to dislike the
Rulami nearly as much as he did the Kandans. He couldn't hope to see the
Zungans storm over the walls of this city. But if the
Rulami ever sent an army south to try to overcome the Zungans, he would be
very happy to see the bodies of its soldiers littering the plain all the way
to the horizon.

The surgeon went out and the girls followed him. Not one of them even looked
back at Blade. He was alone in the whole vast bath chamber, lying on the rug,
looking up at the figures writhing across the ceiling.
He was not alone for long, though. The faint squeal, of a door opening was
followed by the padding of bare feet approaching him across the rug. He looked
up. He hardly needed to do so to know that Queen
Roxala was standing there, looking down at him.
She wore a shimmering blue gown bordered with black and gold, with ruby
buttons down the front.
Blade could not help staring at the rubies. Some of them were the size of
pigeon's eggs.
Roxala misinterpreted the stare. "You want me, do you Blade? I could see that
in the garden. I can see it now. Am I right?" There was a bantering note in
her voice, but also an implied threat.
"You are a superlatively beautiful woman," said Blade carefully. "How could I
help but want you?" And in fact the thought of embracing the body he had seen

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half-revealed earlier that afternoon had certainly aroused him. Within seconds
it had increased to the point where eyes less sharp than the queen's would
have seen it. Blade was glad for once that his reason did not control every
part of his body. If it had, he would have been hard put to conjure up the
response necessary for dealing with this lushly decadent queen.
"You obviously cannot help it," said Roxala. She reached out a bare foot with
gilded toenails and squeezed Blade's stiffened organ with her long supple
toes. "That is good for both me and you." Her hands moved to the top button of
her robe and undid it. "Would you like to see me dance for you, Blade?"
Blade was able to come up with what he hoped would be a tactful answer. "If it
will display your beauty to yet a greater advantage, Your Majesty, then by all
means dance."
That seemed to please her. She smiled-Blade could almost call it a simper. It
seemed horribly out of place, here and on the face of this woman, considering
what he knew about her. He despaired of ever trying to make sense of Queen
Roxala, and lay back on the rug, head propped on one arm to watch her dance.
She started off with a slow swaying of her hips that made the gown swirl and
wave and throw off reflections. The rubies flashed fire. She bent forward,
slowly, gracefully, until she was bent almost double, swaying her upper body
as she did so. Blade could see the full breasts moving under the thin material
of the gown. She bowed further, until her long black hair flowed down to the
rug. Then she snapped upright and arched almost as far back as she had arched
forward. As she curved backward, thrusting her breasts up at the ceiling, she
unhooked another of the buttons. Then she swayed forward again.
This time as she bowed, she shrugged first one shoulder, then the other. The
gown slipped down until it was held halfway up her arms. Her breasts were
outlined against the gown, full, ripe, and now half-exposed.
She straightened up and began to move in a rapid circle, feet flicking in and
out under the skirt of the gown. At the same time her hips went into action
again. Not a circular motion this time, but a slow, infinitely sensual rocking
back and forth. Inch by inch the gown slipped down. Now it was held only by
the swell of her breasts. With thumb and forefinger she teased the third ruby
out of its hook. The gown gave up the struggle entirely and slipped down onto
the floor.

She waited as it flowed down into a blue pool around her feet, then stepped
out of it. Now she was nude except for a golden girdle that rose to just below
her breasts. The breasts themselves swayed free, ripe and full like summer
melons, boldly tipped with nipples whose darkness was a startling contrast to
the white skin with its net of fine blue veins.
Free of the gown, Roxala's movements became freer-and wilder. She whirled and
leaped and swayed.
She cupped her breasts in her long-fingered hands and thrust them toward
Blade. She knelt down and shook her whole upper body, making her breasts
wiggle and her hair leap and flow about her shoulders.
A thought passed through Blade's mind, ludicrous but undeniable. Perhaps he
should try to kidnap
Roxala and get her back to Home Dimension. The project could be run for years
on what the queen would earn as an erotic dancer. Then Roxala's hands
fluttered down to the hooks on the girdle and
Blade's attention snapped back to her.
One hook, two hooks-he could see the cleft of her buttocks now, and faint
curls of dark hair in front.
Three hooks-a quick wiggle of now bared hips, and the girdle slipped down to
join the gown on the rag.
Naked, flaunting all the magnificence of her body, she rose on tiptoe, raising
her arms high over her head and arching her body. Then she flowed down in a
single motion onto the floor and rolled over on her back.
"Come to me now, Blade. Come to me now," she sighed. He did not need her

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urging. The long slow stripping and the wild erotic fury of her dance had him
aroused more than he would have believed possible without physical contact. He
did not even take time to rise to his feet, but rolled over and over, across
the rug to her.
Her body was already wet with sweat from her dancing and as slippery to his
touch as if it had been oiled. She moaned as his hands clamped down on her
breasts. Blade sensed she wanted no gentleness, no tenderness, rather strength
and fury. So his hands squeezed down hard on the full breasts she again thrust
toward him. He was rewarded by feeling those startlingly dark nipples rise and
stiffen under his hands, thrusting out into dark spears. It seemed impossible
that they could be so long, so hard. He said so.
"Ah, but its how hard you are, how long you are, that's important now," she
said in a half-gasp, half-moan. She reached for his erect phallus and grabbed
it with the same vigor he had used on her.
"Come on, Blade. Come-on!"
He obliged. He rolled toward her as she twisted on her side and rolled toward
him. They met, they joined, he thrust deep into her already slick vagina. He
felt her stiffen and saw her head roll back and her eyes roll up as he drove
into her. Again he made no effort at gentleness or tenderness, again he hurled
himself into the play with all his force. He made no effort to slow himself or
hold himself or pace himself, and got away with it all. It was barely seconds
before the queen's body shuddered for the first time, enormously and terribly,
breath rasping in her throat. It was not much longer before she peaked again.
And then Blade's furious vigor brought him to the peak also. His own hot fury
spurting into her brought her to the third and most savage - climax. She
collapsed beside him, limp and numb. But her arms-strong arms too-held him so
tightly that even if he had wanted to, he could not withdraw from her.
They lay on the rug, silent, bodies locked together for a long time. Gradually
their breathing slowed to normal, gradually the glazed animal look left
Roxala's eyes. She lifted herself up to look at Blade, her nipples brushing
his now sweaty chest, and smiled.
"Blade, I think you are what a woman needs. Even a woman who is a queen. You
will be staying with

me." It was not a question, not even an order. It was a flat statement,
intended to have the force of natural law. And for Roxala, Blade realized that
her will was just exactly that.
That was the first time they made love, but not the last. It was not even the
last time that day, because
Roxala drew Blade into four more bouts before the next dawn. Blade wasn't sure
if it was correct to call the queen insatiable, since she was eventually
satiated. But no one could ever call her moderate in her pursuit of pleasure.
But Roxala was not a complete slave to her pleasures-far from it. Though the
laws and customs of
Rulam offered much freedom to women, it still took unusual force of character
for Roxala to have held her own against King Kleptor for nearly twenty years.
This was particularly true when one considered that King Kleptor was not in
fact a weak character.
"He indeed is the one pushing for all-out war against Zunga," said Roxala as
they lay in her bed watching dawn break over the city. Blade managed to avoid
any visible reaction. But the queen's words were a considerable surprise to
him. So Kleptor was actually pushing for the thing the Zungans most feared, an
invasion in strength by Rulam's ironclad soldiers?
But Roxala was going on, too concerned with her own views of the situation to
pay any attention to
Blade's reactions. "Yes, he is massing the beasts and the men and the wagons
in his camp already. In another two or three months he will start south, as
soon as the summer heat leaves the plains. He thinks that by conquering the
Zungans he will obtain such glory that he will be able to move against me,

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remove me, execute me even." She turned to him and flowed against his chest.
"And it was Kleptor who ordered the efforts to capture you. The-whatever you
call your Minister for War down in Zunga-the-"
"The On'ror?" Blade's voice was flat and cold.
"Yes, that one." She made no attempt to pronounce the name. "He and your
priests sent word that if you were allowed to train the Zungans in your new
fighting arts, it would become almost impossible to defeat them. So Rulami
soldiers were wandering all over the Kandan forests looking for you." She
smiled. "I
didn't care much whether the Zungans learned to fly through the air on
broomsticks and land on top of the royal palace. I still don't. The important
thing is, I have you. Here. With me. And no other woman can have you again."
Then they made love once more.
Fortunately Roxala had some affairs of her own to attend to, so Blade was left
alone after breakfast. He badly needed both the breakfast, to fill his
stomach, and the solitude, to set his thoughts in order.
Roxala was lusty, scheming, fiercely jealous, and feared nothing and no one,
not even King Kleptor. She was a dangerous protectress, but would be an
effective one as long as he satisfied her physical desires.
And she was not ambitious for conquest. Kleptor was. And that made him the
real enemy. Behind
Roxala's protection-from behind her skirts, as it were-Blade had a priceless
opportunity to work against the man who dreamed of conquering Zunga. He wished
he could also get word back to the Zungans of the On'ror's treachery. That
would give Afuno all the excuse he needed and ten times more besides to move
against the Ulungas. But without Kleptor, there would be no one left to whom
the On'ror could betray Zunga. The On'ror and his priestly allies would be
left stranded and harmless. Kleptor had to be the main target for now.
Blade found the next two months maddeningly frustrating. He had complete
freedom to move about within Roxala's palace, and all the servants jumped to
obey any order he gave. Or almost any. He could not leave the palace without
the queen accompanying him, nor could he pay any attention to the woman
slaves. He did not mind so much being confined to the palace most of the time.
Certainly not after four

black-masked men leaped out of the bushes in the courtyard one night while he
walked there in search of fresh air. He was unarmed, but fortunately they only
had knives, so he found it easy to kill two at once and hold off the others
until the guards came up and finished the work. If Blade had doubted Kleptor's
hostility before, he did so no longer. Even the queen was surprised by the
limits to which the king seemed prepared to go.
"I think he truly fears that you are a threat to his throne, not just to his
possession of me," Roxala said.
"Before, the men I have taken were good, stout fellows, lusty and strong and
inexhaustible. But what brains they had were between their legs, not between
their ears. He knows that you are a different kind of man. You have all the
talents of those who have come before you-" she grinned wickedly "-and many
more besides. When Kleptor thinks of you, I'll wager he has visions of you
sitting on the throne of Rulam beside me and his own body staked out on an
ants' nest. That might happen. It might."
So there was another thing for Blade to worry about. Was Queen Roxala suddenly
going to start plotting to overthrow Kleptor? Not that Blade objected to
overthrowing Kleptor-in fact it was the best thing that could happen for the
Zungans. But he did not want to get any more involved in anything Roxala was
planning than was absolutely necessary. He neither liked her nor trusted her.
He liked and trusted her even less after seeing what she did the one and only
time he spoke to one of the slave girls. The poor girl made matters worse by
replying. She even smiled at Blade as she did so. The next morning Roxala led
Blade down into a deep cellar, where the girl was chained to a wall. She had

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Blade stand and watch while the girl was whipped until her back was pulped,
raw, bloody flesh. Then the girl was turned around-and this time when the whip
stopped she was dead.
But Roxala let herself go that way only a few times. Meanwhile, she taught
Blade or had him taught an immense amount about living among the Rulami. He
was initiated into the Caste of Warriors. Roxala took particular delight in
making Horun one of the warriors whose role it was to stand up and bear
witness to
Blade's skill as a fighter. He was taught the use of Rulami weapons, which he
learned easily and well. He was taught to ride and manage the Ivory People.
That he did not learn so easily, but he put so much effort into it that he
also learned it well. When and if the time came for escape, he would find that
escape far easier mounted on one of the great beasts, pounding along at
seventy miles a day. He also studied all the maps of Rulami and Kandan
territory he could get hold of. He told Roxala that he wanted to be able to
play a part in the coming war with the Zungans worthy of his rank.
Roxala was almost skeptical. "But were you not aiding the Zungans to develop
new ways of fighting us?"
"I was. But I see things rather differently now. This is a great city and a
mighty people. The Zungans are a bunch of black savages living in huts." Never
mind that Afuno was a better and wiser leader than any
Blade had seen in Rulam or Kanda, or that Princes Aumara was worth ten of this
lust-driven and sadistic queen. Blade knew he had to fill Roxala's ears with
what she wanted to hear. And what she wanted to hear was what all the Rulami
believed-that the Zungans were worthless black savages, fit only to be stamped
out under the feet of Rulam's soldiers and made slaves.
For all her sophistication in intrigue, Roxala took Blade's remarks at face
value. She was too prejudiced and vain to do otherwise. She grinned and said,
"In that case, have you thought of teaching our soldiers how to cope with
those new methods of fighting you taught the Zungans? That would certainly
convince
King Kleptor that you were to be trusted."
Blade looked sharply at Roxala. "Do you really want me to help Kleptor's
dreams and schemes?"
Roxala laughed and shook her head. "No, I suppose when all is said and done, I
don't. But I do know

what I want you to do now, with me."
They did it and afterward while Roxala went off to let her women bathe her,
Blade lay in the bed and let out a long sigh of relief. That could have been a
nasty one. The Zungans would have little enough chance against the Rulami army
as it was. If their enemies knew and could meet the new fighting style their
chances would shrink away almost to nothing. He would have done his best to
get out of helping the
Rulami, but it might have been hard to think up a good excuse if Roxala had
insisted.
Blade's luck and quick wits kept him out of trouble for the rest of the two
months, while he made love to the queen, practiced with his weapons, and
sharpened his skills as a rider of the Ivory People. As long as
Roxala was getting enough loving, she was willing to think of politics and war
only at intervals, although she thought dangerously well at those times. If it
came to the crunch, Roxala looked like she'd be a treacherous but probably
competent ally. And from his experience, Blade much preferred treacherous
allies to incompetent ones. The latter were totally unpredictable, most likely
to open their mouths when they should keep them shut.
At the end of the two months, word came up from the south that a Zungan army
was marching north into
Rulami territory! It was now just south of the main forest belt, with one wing
thrown out to mask Kanda.

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The Kandans had retreated into their city, and the Rulami patrols in the area
had already been swept up or forced to retreat into the forest.
Blade could not keep a straight face when the news came. Fortunately, he was
able to pass off his amazement as surprise at the Zungans' folly. "How can
they think of doing anything against the army of
Rulam, fighting on its home territory? If they are defeated, they will never
get home, and the whole of
Zunga will lie open to its enemies." He was entirely sincere in that attitude
and those words. What had possessed King Afuno?
The queen shrugged. They were lying in bed after a bout of love, and she was
reluctant at such times to discuss politics and war. "I don't know. They say
the Ulungas had omens, and the-the On'ror-interpreted the omens as telling the
Zungans to march north."
Blade felt slightly sick inside. That was just what the Ulungas and the On'ror
would do if they wanted to ensure the defeat of the Zungan army. No doubt they
had realized how their schemes for restricting the training in the new
fighting had been outflanked They had realized that the Zungans might soon
become invincible and their own position become precarious. So, once again,
they had chosen to doom the
Zungan people rather than risk their status. Under the covers, Blade's fists
clenched. He wished he had the On'ror there before him, He would drive his
fists into the man's face until there was nothing but splintered bone and
mashed flesh.
That was only the first news. Over the next few days more poured in, and then
more. Kanda was under siege, its armies finding it safer not to take to the
field. The Zungans had no method of scaling the walls, but they held the
city's fields and the shores of the lake where its fishermen drew their nets.
It had food for less than a month within its walls. If the Zungan army was not
driven away soon, it would be the end for Kanda.
Personally, Blade thought that the end of Kanda was an excellent idea. So did
more than a few of the
Rulami leaders, including, so the rumor ran, King Kleptor himself. They had
always chafed at having to pay out good firestones for ivory and slaves. If
Kanda and the Ivory Tower fell, this would end. Rulam's boundaries could be
extended a full two days' march southward. And the Zungan army, weakened from
its long campaign against Kanda, would be easier prey. Kanda and Zunga, a
clean sweep of both rivals to Rulam's power! Blade saw and heard sober elder
statesmen drinking confident toasts to their city's

new glory.
Then there came rumors and then hard news of a fair-sized battle between
Rulami patrols and the
Zungan outposts. A battle in which the Zungan king himself had been present,
and some of his family captured. There was no report of who had won, or of
what the casualties had been. But rumor had it that the Rulami had been
quickly beaten off after their first attack, and driven away with heavy
losses.
Considering how the same elder statesmen who had been prematurely celebrating
victory suddenly began going around with sober, even grim faces, Blade was
inclined to believe the rumors.
"But at least we've got some of that bastard Afuno's family to play with,"
said Roxala as she and Blade sat over dinner talking of the battle. "One of
them's a princess, daughter to Afuno himself."
It took a greater effort than ever before, but Blade managed to keep his face
calm. Then he fought down an impulse to ask about the princess. Her name, for
example. Roxala did not know about him and
Aumara, but if he started asking questions, she might easily become
suspicious. And then the fate of the princess, whether she was Aumara or
another, would at once become much, much harsher.

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"Kleptor wants to hold the princess as a hostage. For what, I wonder? That
band of savages can't have any proper family ties. What good would it do? No,
I have a better plan." It seemed that Kleptor was going to hold a massive
field day at the army's camp, with large-scale combats between the various
teams of arena men. This was to be Kleptor's day of vaunting and glory. But
Roxala would have her moments, too. She would offer the crowd an unprecedented
show-the public execution, by torture, of a real live Zungan princess. She
could be quite sure of getting her hands on the princess, so the matter was
all but settled.
"And you will be there beside me, Blade, fully armed, with the firestone of
the Queen's Champion on your chest. You will lead my arena men in the contest,
and Kleptor and all Rulam will get a chance to see you in action."
Roxala kept that promise. When she took her seat in the Queen's box at the
camp arena three days later, Blade was indeed standing beside her. His helmet
and armor were silvered, his sword of the finest steel with a gold hilt, his
boots and shield choice polished leather from the hides of the Ivory People. A
red plume nodded from the crest of his helmet, and on his armored chest
dangled the promised ruby. It was the finest pigeon's-blood color, and larger
than he would have believed possible-as large as his own clenched fist. He
heard a clank every time it swung on its gold chain against his breastplate.
Queen
Roxala wore another one of her tight-fitting gowns, this one a dazzling
mixture of silver and gold, with rubies on ears, throat, wrists, fingers, and
along the seams of the gown. Blade tried to reckon up the value of her rubies,
then abandoned the struggle.
The arena before them was about two hundred feet on a side. From its
hard-packed earth it obviously served as a drill field for Kleptor's army.
Wooden stands rose along one side for the high-ranking spectators. Of the
other three sides, two were occupied by soldiers drawn up in flawless
formation, standing motionless under the broiling sun. On the third side a
vast mass of slaves, mostly Zungan, also stood motionless. What little breeze
there was blew from them, blowing their stench across the arena to
Blade and the queen. The queen buried her nose in a perfumed pomander, and
even Blade found himself wrinkling his nose.
Now came a mighty blare of trumpets, echoed by the bellowings of the Ivory
People. Through the corner between the two masses of soldiers came a
procession of a dozen or more of the great beasts, each carrying half a dozen
soldiers. Blade saw Horun mounted on the neck of the first one. At the end of
the procession came a beast whose tusks had been gilded and tipped with gold
balls, whose flanks were

hung with silver cloth shimmering with rubies, whose claws had been painted a
glossy black. On its back sat King Kleptor.
Like all the Rulami, he was a well-fleshed type. But even from this distance
Blade could see that Kleptor had carried the tendency to extremes. A massive
paunch swelled out his gold tunic, and his swollen thighs and calves strained
at their hose. A square-cut black beard did not conceal the jowls, the double
chin, or the sagging cheeks. Blade grimaced in disgust. Kleptor seemed an
appropriate king for Rulam, proud, rich, and decadent as it was. He looked
aside for a moment at Roxala. At least her decadence had some life in it.
Kleptor looked like a thing dying, if not already dead.
The processions stopped in front of the stands, and four slaves ran out
pushing a wheeled ladder to the side of Kleptor's mount. The king heaved
himself off the saddle and lurched and staggered down the ladder, while the
slaves struggled to hold it upright.
"Once the slaves let it fall, and Kleptor with it," said Roxala. "He had all
four of them burned alive over a slow fire."
As Kleptor lumbered toward the far end of the stands, two servants from his
train ran toward where

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Blade and the queen sat. Each was carrying a ruby-studded gold cup. As they
approached, Blade could see that each cup was filled with translucent green
wine. Standing on the hard earth in front of the stands, they could just reach
up high enough to offer the wine cups to Blade and the queen. Roxala stared at
the slaves, then over at Kleptor, then at Blade.
"Slaves!" she barked. "You will drink first from each cup, then offer it."
Blade started, then stared down at the two slaves. Did the one in front of him
look a little startled?
He leaned over and stared closer, then said, "The queen commands you to
drink." The slave with the queen's cup lifted it to his lips and drank deep.
The slave with Blade's cup hesitated, then his cup too rose. Blade watched the
wine trickle down from the corners of the man's mouth. Then in one leap he was
out of his seat, over the edge of the stands, and down on the ground. His
sword rasped out and jabbed the slave in his wine-stained neck. His voice was
a rasp as he spoke. "The queen said drink, you swine, not spit it out. Now
drink! And I want to see your throat move."
The wine cup rose again, and this time the wine did not trickle down. The
slave's throat jerked in swallowing motions once, twice, three times. He stood
in silence a moment, the wine cup still raised to his lips. Then his hands
loosened. The wine cup thudded to the ground, spilling out a green puddle. He
bent double, hands clasping at his stomach. Then he fell forward onto the
ground, kicking wildly. As he hit the ground, he began to scream.
Blade turned to Roxala. Her face was pale, but she only shrugged. "Kleptor
must be getting overbold, to try to poison my champion before all the nobles
and the army," She smiled grimly. "Or perhaps he thought it would be part of
the day's entertainment. Perhaps I can make a few changes in the plans, too."
Blade did not like the expression on her face. If he had been Kleptor, he knew
that he would have liked it even less.
Blade looked toward the king's end of the stands. Kleptor was sitting as still
and silent as a temple image. But watching closely, Blade saw the king's eyes
occasionally flicker toward the queen, then to
Blade, and finally down to the slave dying in agony on the ground. There was
no expression on his face during any of this. Kleptor, Blade suspected, would
prove a shrewder plotter than the queen.
Then the trumpets blared again. Through the gap in the corner of the arena
more armed men were

marching. These were tough-looking, rangy men of all colors and sizes, in a
variety of dress and fighting equipment. The arena men. They were marching in
two columns of fifty-odd men apiece, one headed by the king's standard, one by
the queen's. The players were here; the game was about to begin.
No, there was still something missing. The Zungan princess Roxala had
snatched. Her death by torture was supposed to be the opening event. Blade was
glad he had eaten only an early and light breakfast.
Seeing helpless women die by inches was not something he could watch unmoved.
But at least he hoped he could keep his face straight. Doing anything to
arouse Roxala's hair-trigger jealousy would simply prolong the girl's torment.
There came another blast of trumpets, and after it the sound of a Zungan iron
gong. Someone was beating it in a mocking parody of the Zungan processional.
Then three clusters of figures marched into the arena. Two Zungan slaves
carrying a gong, with a Rulami walking behind them and beating it with a
mallet. Four armed guards with drawn swords, escorting a large wooden stake
carried by half a dozen more slaves. And finally four more armed guards,
marching along in a square. In the middle of the square, a woman. Naked, her
mahogany skin layered with dust, sagging under fatigue and the weight of the
chains on her neck and limbs.
Princess Aumara.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Blade knew within seconds after recognizing Aumara that he was not simply

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going to sit quietly in the stands and watch her die in agony. King Afuno
might forgive him for that, considering the circumstances.
But his own conscience never would. In fact, there was no point in even trying
to sit still. He knew he could never control himself well enough to avoid
rousing Roxala's suspicions. And her suspicions would lead to jealousy, and
her jealousy to his death. He would simply be signing his own death warrant,
without giving Aumara a quick and merciful death.
So he did not climb back into the stands and sit down beside the queen. He
whirled, drew his sword again, and sprinted out into the arena toward the
princess and her guards. As he ran, his mind was working furiously. Was there
anything he could do for Aumara except give her that quick death?
His headlong charge across the arena took everybody totally by surprise.
Before the gasps and yells rose into the air he was halfway to Aumara. The
guards stared at him as though he were an apparition from another world.
He charged in among the guards around Aumara while they were still staring.
His sword whistled through the air and through two necks before either of
their owners could make a move in their own defense. One of the guards had the
keys to Aumara's chains on his belt. Blade snatched them from the falling man
and threw them to the princess, then spun about to meet the surviving guards.
All six of them were coming at him now. Then the shrill screams of Roxala rose
above the crowd's roar as she yelled orders to her arena men. They swung
about, and fifty of them began to move toward Blade.
This is it, he thought grimly. He flicked a glance toward Aumara, who was
almost free of her chains now.
If he was going to kill her, it would have to be soon. He killed another
guard, leaving five, then stepped back and raised his sword. Aumara looked up
at it and then at him. She understood. He tensed-
And then pulled his downstroke to a stop in midair as the king's arena men
also turned. Their swords and spears and maces rose. Then their commanders
barked orders, and they moved at a quick jog

toward the mass of the queen's arena men. The five guards drew away from
Blade, and dashed away, around toward the queen's men.
Blade stared. So did Aumara. Then Blade realized what was happening-or at
least what might be happening. Kleptor was pretending that the queen's arena
men had revolted, and was sending his own to wipe them out-and incidentally to
wipe out Blade and rescue Aumara. The second goal Blade approved of, the first
not so much. But with luck, though, Kleptor's move would hurl things into such
confusion that nobody would pay attention to Blade and Aumara. All at once
they had a chance of escape.
But it was only a chance. The arena was still surrounded by Keptor's soldiers,
who could trap them if anybody gave the right orders. He and Aumara would have
to move fast, before anybody thought of those right orders. Blade knew that
whether he survived or not there would be more bad blood between
Kleptor and Roxala over this day's work, but he had a preference for
surviving.
Here came a new danger. And, Blade suddenly realized, their best chance of
safety! Horun had wheeled his mount out of the line before the stands and was
goading it across the arena toward Blade and
Aumara. The officer was crouching low in his saddle, bending far out and down
and swinging a long sword in his right hand. The other soldiers that had
ridden the beast had dismounted. Horun could not resist the chance to be a
hero in front of the whole Rulami army by striking down Blade.
The big beast was moving at a trot by the time it approached Blade. Blade
stood his ground as Horun thundered down at him. As the animal's long tusks
came within reach, Blade calculated the precise moment, then grabbed a tusk in
each hand. Swinging his whole weight upward on his powerful arms, he vaulted
onto the animal's forehead before Horun could react. Blade's sword rasped out
of its scabbard again, whistled through the air, and sank with a meaty chunk

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into Horun's neck. Blood spurted high, Horun's eyes rolled up in his head, and
with a bewildered and stunned expression he toppled off his mount onto the
ground. Blade snatched the man's goad out of his hand as he went down and
pulled the animal to a stop. Then he yelled to Aumara, and a moment later she
was lithely scrambling up beside him.
Blade grabbed her around the waist and rapped the animal smartly with the goad
again.
Before anybody realized what was happening and could give those necessary
orders, Blade had his mount up to a full trot again. Everybody was too stunned
by the swift flurry of events, or perhaps too engrossed in watching the arena
men slaughtering each other to notice. Blade headed his mount to the right,
toward the gap between the two masses of soldiers. A few hardy spirits broke
out of formation and tried to block the animal's path, then lost their nerve
at the last minute and scampered to safety. One of them, slower of foot than
his comrades, died screaming, spitted on the beast's left tusk. Blade applied
the goad again, and they thundered down the passage at a full gallop.
Blade kept the beast moving at that speed as he swung it still further to the
right, down the main street of the camp and toward the main gate. If any
orders to close those gates were given, the sentries either never heard them
or were too stunned to obey. Blade took his mount through the wide-open gates
at full speed in a cloud of dust and the cheerful curses hurled at the guards
by Aumara.
Almost at the gate of the camp lay forest, the northern fringes of the great
Rulami forests that stretched south toward Kanda-and now toward the Zungan
army. Again Blade did not spare the goad, and they plunged into the forest
still at a gallop. They trampled bushes and smashed aside small trees like a
runaway tank, putting more and more miles behind them, between them and
Kleptor's army.
It was not until late afternoon that Blade let the animal drop below a trot.
Even then, he would have kept it going if he thought it could have stood the
pace any longer. But even the fabulous endurance of the
Ivory People had its limits. A little while later they came to a stream, and
Blade let the animal drink while

he and Aumara dismounted and did the same.
After drinking, they let the animal browse among the bushes and saplings while
they bathed. Blade felt as though he were bathing away more than the sweat and
grime caked on him by the battle and the mad flight. He felt as though he were
washing away the strain and frustration of his captivity as Roxala's chosen
stud, and all the filth and decadence of Rulam in general.
He looked at Aumara. She was almost as pleasing to the eye as before, as she
splashed about with the water beading on her dark skin. She had not been a
slave more than a few days, not long enough for hunger or confinement to thin
her ripe body or take the spirit out of her. But her back showed a mass of
criss-crossing welts, and her wrists and ankles were half raw from the chafing
of the irons.
Blade pointed at her back. "Queen Roxala's doing, by any chance?"
She nodded. Then she looked at him and said, "Blade, I knew you were favored
by the Sky Father. But
I did not think that he would work such a miracle for you and for me. How did
we ever get away? I can hardly believe that we are here, free."
"We're not completely in the clear yet," Blade cautioned her. "Kleptor and
Roxala may not be at each other's throats enough to prevent a search party
from being sent out. But at least we've got a good headstart." He shook his
head to clear the water from his ears, then went on.
"I knew that Roxala and Kleptor were just short of open warfare. Not very
short, considering that he tried to start off the day's business by poisoning
me in full sight of his whole army. And your death by torture was Roxala's
project-Kleptor didn't approve of it at all. At least not right then. When

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Roxala ordered her arena men to kill me and get you ready for the torture, it
looked to the crowd like they were getting out of hand. So Kleptor could order
his arena men to move in on the queen's, wipe them out, kill me, rescue
you-and nobody in the crowd would know what was really involved. After that,
Horun made us the gift of his mount, and there was nothing left to do but run
like the wind. There's an English saying that covers what happened today.
'Order, -counterorder-disorder.' And there was certainly enough disorder!"
Aumara nodded. "But before that?"
"Yes. I would have killed you, to spare you what Roxala had planned. I'd seen
what her mind ran to, in the way of tortures."
"So had I. I didn't mind dying so much myself, but-Blade, I am carrying your
child. I am glad that is safe for now."
Blade held her for a moment, then said, "I think our friend of the Ivory
People has got back some of his strength. It's time we were on the move
again."
They were almost continuously on the move for two days without hearing any
signs of pursuit.
Occasionally they had to sneak past isolated forest dwellings or across roads,
but there was little activity and less habitation in these forests. Aumara
recognized this as more good luck, and made solemn prayers to the Sky Father
in thanks for it and hope that it would continue.
Possibly the prayers were effective. Possibly also the fact that the Zungan
invasion had scared the normal forest population into fleeing north helped.
But for whatever reason, natural or otherwise, their luck held all the way
south.

It was on the morning of the fourth day that Blade was scouting ahead across a
clearing rank with long, dew-laden grass. He saw dark figures moving in the
woods across the clearing, froze, watched, and waited. The mahogany colored
skins and spears became visible. His spears too-he recognized the balance
weights at the butts. He stepped out into the open, made the Peace Hand, and
shouted.
All the Zungans instantly faded into the undergrowth, except for one who
stepped out into the open, made the Peace Hand in reply-and then dropped his
spear in astonishment. His mouth sagged open so wide it was awhile before he
could choke out the words, "Richard Blade of the English?"
"Yes. And Princess Aumara escaped with me. She is back there in the forest."
He turned and shouted.
"Aumara, we are safe! A Zungan patrol!" Again the Zungan gaped and stared as
Aumara stepped out into the open. Finally he managed to get his mouth closed,
then opened it again to greet the princess and call his men out from cover.
Blade noticed that all eighteen of the Zungans were carrying the new spears.
He asked about that.
"Ah, the new fighting art is all over Zunga now," the warrior replied. "Half
our warriors have the
Blade-spears, and many hundreds can use them well. The On'ror and the Ulungas
grumble, but we have not yet violated the letter of their decision. And the
letter of their decision is all that King Afuno will let them enforce."
"King Afuno is a wise and great king," said Blade. "I am glad to be able to
make him happy by bringing his daughter back to him. And I do not think the
On'ror will be able to enforce anything very much longer."
His tone as he said this discouraged questions. The patrol leader nodded and
said, "Tell us about what has happened to you."
Blade told of his adventures once there in the clearing, twice more on the way
back as they met other patrols, and a good half dozen times after they got
back to the main camp of the Zungan army that afternoon. By this time he was
getting a little weary of the repetition. But that evening King Afuno arrived
from a visit to the part of his army that was besieging Kanda. Blade did not
mind at all telling the king the story of his capture and escape-and what he

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learned in Rulam.
Afuno's face went dark and hard as stone when Blade told him about the
treachery of the On'ror.
"Aumara had very nearly convinced me of this before she was captured," said
the king. "But I-after she was captured, I did not... " He shrugged, for the
moment too filled with a mixture of emotions to go on.
Finally he shook his head. "I am glad she is back. In truth I was not sure
that I cared whether Zunga lost or won this war after Aumara was captured." He
fixed Blade with his old familiar sharp look. "What does
Aumara truly want of you?"
That was a question it took Blade some time to answer. He wanted to pick and
choose his words, and he was too tired for that amount of mental effort.
Finally he said, "She would like me to be her husband. I
do not know whether she wants me also to be King of Zunga, or whether she is
willing to step down from her place in favor of a younger sister. If I were
you, Your Majesty-"
"You are not me, Richard Blade," said Afuno. "And I will decide whether I will
offer a warrior of the
English to the Zungans as their king. Certainly I will not ask Aumara to step
down from what is her right unless there is nothing else I can do. But I do
not know if even what you have done will make my people

accept you as king. As a great warrior and the new On'ror, almost certainly.
But as king?" He shook his head. "There must be something more you can do to
make yourself a name. I wish I could make it something not dangerous, because
I think Aumara will pull what hair I have left out by the roots if I send you
into any more danger. But the Zungans are a warrior people, so..."
"I know," said Blade. "But I think I know a possible answer. Remember what I
said about the rivalries among our enemies? Rulam and Kanda have little in
common, and Kleptor and Roxala even less. I think there are ways we can take
advantage of these divisions. Above all; this will make our fight easier and
less costly. There is an English saying that applies here. It is 'divide and
conquer.' "
Blade outlined his scheme in a few sentences. Afuno's eyes widened and gleamed
with satisfaction. He practically rubbed his hands.
"Marvelous," he said finally. "It will do all you say, I hope. And at least it
will allow us to make the best use of the few really good new-style fighters
we have. A great many of our warriors can wave their new spears around
marvelously, but all they could do in battle with this spear-waving is to
scare off birds. If only we could have dealt with the On'ror beforehand. Ah,
well, we shall not have to worry about him again."
Blade nodded. "I hope not. As much as the king and queen of Rulam hate each
other, I do not think they have stopped hating us even more. I think a Rulami
army will be coming soon against us within a few days."
Both Afuno's prediction and Blade's were accurate. The On'ror vanished from
his tent in the dark hours of the next morning and was never seen again.
And a week later, the northern patrols reported that the army of Rulam was on
the march.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There had been a light rain the night before, so the Rulami army raised no
dust clouds to mark its advance. But King Afuno had thrown out a swarm of
scouts well to the north of his own army. These formed a broad arc across the
Rulami line of advance. He would not be taken by surprise. The Rulami army had
hardly broken camp and begun to file out of the forest when the messengers
began coming back with their reports from the scouting line.
King Afuno sat on a hide spread on the ground in the shade of a small tree,
listening to the reports as they came in. Beside him stood Blade and Nayung.
Both now carried new-style spears adorned with the double tuft of blue
feathers that marked Great D'bors.

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"I can think of no two men in all the army of Zunga who deserve the rank
more," Afuno had said the night before as he handed them the spears. "In fact,
if there was time to call a meeting of the War
Council, I would raise Blade to On'ror in place of that traitor we have now
sent to his fate. But there is no time for that. We will be giving battle
tomorrow morning at the latest."
And now it was tomorrow morning, and it was obvious that they would indeed be
giving battle before the sun rose much higher. Afuno nibbled on a piece of
bread and swept the crumbs from his lap onto the ground as he listened to the
latest report.
"That makes at least fifteen thousand men facing us," he said to Blade. "Are
there likely to be many more from Rulam?"

Blade shook his head. "Not impossible, but not likely either, Your Majesty.
They have to leave a large force at home to prevent rebellion among their
conquered cities and their slaves. And both King Kleptor and Queen Roxala have
probably left their best men in Rulam, each to watch the other."
"Probably," said Afuno, sourly. "I hope you are right, Blade. With fifteen
thousand men of Rulam, we will be facing twenty thousand or more when the army
of Kanda joins them. And we are less than eighteen thousand now. There will be
no more coming in before the battle. And we have little or nothing left at
home to defend our towns if we lose. We are playing for high stakes in this
battle, Blade-will Zunga survive or not? I hope your plan works. More depends
on it than whether you become king of Zunga or not. Much more."
"I know, Your Majesty," said Blade. "But it should work. I've seen what good
fighters with the new spears can do to even the best Rulami soldiers. So have
you. And I know what will happen if we behead the enemy's armies. We will
loose intrigue and treachery among them like a plague. They will be too busy
fighting civil wars and each other to worry about us in Zunga for many years
to come. Consider what would happen to Zunga if you were killed, Your Majesty.
Then consider that among our enemies things will be ten times worse."
Afuno grunted. Blade wasn't sure whether the king agreed with him or was
simply trying to shut him up.
Nayung shook his head. "All this is well and good, provided that the Kandans
actually unite their army with that of Rulam, so that we get a chance at both
leaders."
"Indeed," said Blade. "But I do not think they will have any choice. The only
man in Rulam who can speak to the Kandans and be listened to is King Kleptor.
And similarly, the only man in Kanda who can be taken seriously and obeyed by
the Rulami is the High Priest himself. They will not dare to fight separate
battles, for fear of being defeated separately."
"Or of being betrayed by their ally," said Nayung.
"Or betrayed," said Blade with a nod.
Afuno rose. "Enough of this gabble about what may be or must be. Let us go
forward and see what is.
That is what we must face, and that is what can kill us." He picked up his two
war spears and motioned to his eight guards. They fell in on either side of
him. Blade and Nayung brought up the rear, and the whole little group turned
north, toward the Zungan battle line.
That line formed an arc more than a mile from end to end. It was divided into
three divisions, each of about five thousand men under a Great D'bor. Of the
men in each division, four thousand stood in the main battle formation, nine
ranks deep. The rest stood in reserve in the rear of the division, and this
thousand included a proportion of men armed and trained with the new spears,
about five hundred to a division. Each division formed an independent unit,
that could advance or retreat as circumstances demanded. The right-flank
division was drawn back a little, since the Kandan army was expected to appear
from that direction.
Except for the presence of the men with the new spears, there was nothing

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about the arrangement of the three divisions that had not been standard Zungan
tactics for many generations. The three divisions included all but about three
thousand of the army's men.
Behind the main line lay the reserve, all three thousand warriors in it armed
and at least somewhat trained with the new spears. That was the army's secret
weapon, its shock troops-and Blade's. It was the

beheading sword he intended to swing at the armies of Rulam and Kanda. With
Kleptor and the High
Priest dead or possibly captured, there would be chaos in both enemy cities,
their alliance would fall apart, and there would be no need to risk the lives
of Zungan soldiers killing the Rulami and the Kandans one by one.
That was the chief reason for Blade's plan. If there had been no more reason
for it than to make him famous among the Zungans, he would never have proposed
it. But it also promised a swift, decisive, and long-lasting victory over
Zunga's enemies, perhaps without as long bloody battle that would waste the
Zungans as much as their enemies. To defeat their enemies' armies in the field
would be no victory for
Zunga if their own ranks were demolished in the process.
So the Zungan army stood in its battle formation under the rising glare and
heat of the sun. Blade noticed many of the warriors looking upward toward the
clear blue sky. It was a good omen, to be fighting under a clear sky. The Sky
Father could look down upon his people, watch their fighting, see and approve
their courage. The good weather was lending the Zungans extra confidence.
Blade was glad of that. He himself was a great deal more on edge than he cared
to admit, even to Afuno or Nayung.
The thud of drums and the off-key wailings of flutes off to the right heralded
the arrival of the Kandan army. It was more numerous than Blade had
expected-the mass of men looked nearly seven thousand strong. Red shields
among the black and white ones showed where a fair number of Rulami soldiers
had been included in the Kandan ranks, to stiffen them. But still, the Kandans
must have stripped their walls almost bare of fighting men to make up their
army to such a size. If the Kandan field army died in today's battle, the city
would be a plum ripe for plucking. Blade told himself not to count his
victories before they were won, and stared north, watching and waiting for the
army of Rulam to appear.
He did not have to wait long. Within a few minutes he saw the Zungan scouts
coming back, sprinting for the safety of their own lines. Then the sun glared
on acres of polished armor moving down from the north, and the army of Rulam
flowed into view. They were as well trained and disciplined as the Zungans,
far more so than the Kandans, and made a fine show. They were also taking
formation in three divisions of five thousand soldiers each. But their
divisions stood one behind the other. High above the second division rose
Kleptor's own red banner. One of the Zungans' principal enemies was in the
field. Where was the High Priest?
Then the Kanda flutes broke out again, their discordant wailing setting
Blade's teeth on edge as they broke the silence of the waiting armies. To the
left of the Kandan army a small cluster of figures appeared, bearing above
them a black banner with the white tower badge of the Priests of the Ivory
Tower. The red banner of Rulam started to move, moved toward the Ivory Tower
banner. A body of
Rulami soldiers broke out of their second division, escorting a litter. Even
from where he was standing in front of the Zungan lines, Blade could make out
the obese figure of King Kleptor in the litter. The two big fish were swimming
into the same pond.
But not now. Blade had no intention of leading his shock troops straight into
the jaws of the enemy's armies, particularly when those jaws could close so
easily. Let the enemy make the opening move, come to the Zungans, and be
immobilized. Then would be the time to strike. But would the Rulami attack?

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The Rulami did not attack, but orders must have gone to the Kandan army. In a
few minutes it began sidling slowly around toward the Zungan right, with a
great uproar of drums and flutes and shrill war cries. Its commander was
moving it as a single mass, not trying to divide it for greater flexibility.
Considering the quality of Kandan soldiers, that was probably wise-dividing
the army might have caused chaos rather than improved flexibility. But it made
a formidable body of men slipping toward the Zungan flank.

Afuno barked an order, and messengers dashed off. The Great D'bor of the
right-wing Zungan division in his turn snapped orders, and the division began
to wheel toward the right, facing the Kandans. if they had planned a flank
attack, they abandoned it when they saw the wheeling movement. Once again the
three armies stood in their places under the hot sun. The silence was broken
only by occasional shouted orders and the murmur of voices among the
less-disciplined Kandans.
Afuno came shouldering his way through the Zungan line and moved up to stand
beside Blade. His guards followed him and took formation around him. They were
plainly unhappy about having the king standing out here in plain sight of more
than twenty thousand enemies. Blade felt much the same way.
"Your Majesty, don't you think you should get to the rear?"
"Why? Those bastards over there look like they're going to stand and look at
us until the carrion birds think they're dead and come down to nibble on their
ears and noses."
"Maybe. But I think they will attack soon."
"Perhaps you are right. Do you want to take command of your force now?"
"With Your Majesty's permission."
"You have it."
Blade turned and dashed back through the Zungan lines, to where the three
thousand shock troops waited. They would not be committed to the head-on
collision of the two battle lines that Blade expected. Rulami tactics would
probably take them straight to the Zungan center, planning to break through
there and then wheel to the left and the right with the following divisions.
In such a mob scene the
Zungans' discipline would make their traditional fighting style effective
enough for a while, as long as they held formation. And the enemy's massed
ranks would in any case be less vulnerable to the new Zungan techniques. But
once either side broke its formations open...
Blade ran up to Nayung. "The king has said we can move."
"Good. Where do you want us to go?" By royal command Blade had absolute
control over the shock troops and could move them at will.
"The king and the High Priest are on their left."
"So is the whole Kandan army, Blade."
"I know."
Nayung looked sharply at him. "Blade, are you sure you are not too concerned
with vengeance on the
High Priest? Vengeance for a girl you knew for barely an hour?"
"Nayung, I am not such a fool. The High Priest is the weak spot of all Kanda.
I would be aiming for him if his life was as blameless as a maid's."
Nayung shrugged. Whether or not he was convinced, he was obviously prepared to
obey. "Then-"

Before Nayung could get his suggestion out of his mouth, the trumpets and
drums of the Rulami sounded in a hideous, thundering brazen chorus. Following
hard on their heels came a series of harshly bellowed orders. Then the
sunlight flashed again as the lead division of the Rulami began to move
forward.
They came down against the Zungans at a walk that soon became a run. Their
swords struck fire into

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Blade's eyes as they flashed in the air, and the repeated blasts of their
trumpets drowned out even the thunder of ten thousand marching feet. They
struck the Zungan center with a hideous metallic crash and a chorus of screams
as spears and swords took their first victims. Blade saw the Zungan center
reel bodily backward several yards, then steady itself as its D'bors hurled
threats, curses, and encouragements at their men. A forest of waving spears
sprouted above it as all of the first three ranks went into action.
Blade turned to Nayung. "They've committed themselves to the attack on the
center. At least for now.
We'll never get a better chance." He did not mention his fears that King Afuno
had been unwilling to retreat behind his warriors before the Rulami charge hit
the Zungan line. The whole plan depended on cutting off the heads of the
enemy's force-it would be sheer folly to lose the Zungan's own leader.
But it was a folly that Blade could do nothing about now. He gave his orders
and a thousand of the shock-troop spearmen wheeled about and broke into a run,
heading for the extreme right flank of their own army. To take the whole force
would be foolish-and hopefully unnecessary. The men of the right-hand Zungan
division waved and cheered as Blade's men pounded past. Then the thousand were
out in the open, curving around toward the north again, toward the Kandan
army.
They had better than half a mile to cover, but it was level ground, open and
hard, and the Zungans were running as Blade had never seen them run before.
How they found breath to shout was a mystery to him, but they screamed threats
and curses at the Kandans as they ran. Blade saw the Kandan army clumping
itself to meet the charge. He grinned. The fools were expecting a frontal
attack, and not extending their flank to their left at all. Time for the end
run.
Blade found the breath to shout an order, heard it relayed by Nayung, and saw
the entire mass of running men swerve hard to the right. They passed along the
front of the Kandan army so close that
Blade could see the pale, drawn faces of the enemy soldiers. They were
clutching their swords like drowning men clutching branches, and there was
fear in their eyes as they listened to the curses and war yells of the
Zungans.
Before the slow-moving Kandans could block their path, the Zungans were clear
around the flank of the
Kandan army. Looking along the enemy's rear, Blade saw the little cluster of
figures around the two banners less than another five hundred yards away. He
took deeper breaths and lengthened his stride.
He did not expect the enemy to simply sit and wait while a thousand Zungans
charged their commanders. He knew that his thousand might get in without help,
but they could never get out without it.
But he was certain that surprise and speed and their own fighting skill would
give the Zungans the edge over any defense the enemy could improvise for his
generals. Enough of an edge to bring down those generals, Blade hoped. Again
he lengthened his stride.
The Kandan army seemed paralyzed by the spectacle of the Zungans tearing down
along their rear. Not so the Rulami. Blade heard the trumpet calls rise, and
saw soldiers pouring out of the second Rulami division to form a circle around
the two banners. He saw them begin to move back, and if he could have
lengthened his stride still more, he would have. But his strength and his wind
had reached their limits, and he could move no faster. But neither did he slow
down. He was still moving at full speed as he led his thousand men into the
ranks of the Rulami soldiers. Again there was a terrible noise of metal and
screaming men as the two formations clashed. The Rulami had thrown a circle
six ranks deep around

their king, but the Zungans nearly broke straight through it by sheer impact.
A section manned by more than a hundred men was hurled violently backward by

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the Zungan charge. The two outer ranks simply vanished, stamped out of
existence under the Zungans' feet or smashed down by whirling spears. Rulami
and Zungan bodies piled up in a hideous bloodstained shrieking tangle. With
Nayung beside him, Blade charged the inner ranks of the Rulami.
He was a terrifying spectacle as he lunged and thrust and swung with his
spear, eyes blazing, mouth open to shout savage war yells, splattered with the
blood from the smashed skulls and the crushed chests of his victims. A Rulami
officer ran at Blade, thrusting with his sword. Blade leaped aside, swinging
the weighted butt of his spear down across the man's lunging arm. Bone cracked
and the sword fell. Blade's spear butt flashed up and took the man under the
jaw, again smashing bone. The officer's mouth spewed blood and fragments of
teeth and he fell back, opening a gap in the third rank. Blade plunged into
it.
He parried a downcut from the left and thrust the soldier in the throat,
jerking the spear free in time to ram the butt into another's armored chest.
This blow did not kill, but it stunned and slowed. The spearhead came over and
did the killing as it drove into the man's open mouth. Another rank
penetrated.
Now it was Nayung's turn to move into the lead, and he cleared two more men
out of the way with swift strokes. Not as quickly as Blade, for the two men
were better opponents. But they both went down. The gap they made let Blade
through into the last rank of the circle, spear whirling like a machine, the
head and butt both dripping red by now.
A windmill slash outreached a soldier's sword and laid his face open, cheeks
and nose gaping red above his screaming mouth. The swinging spearhead smashed
into the side of another man's helmet, not doing any direct harm but knocking
him off balance. Nayung took advantage of that to smash the man's thigh, then
stamp on his face as he went down into the welter of bodies on the ground.
By now Blade and Nayung were only the tip of a wedge. It was a wedge of
darting Zungan spears wielded by shrieking Zungan warriors. The pressure of a
thousand fierce men was driving the wedge into the protective circle. The
circle was beginning to sag, crumble, and collapse. Over a third of its men
were down now, and the Zungans were killing the Rulami faster than they could
reinforce their circle. And then
Blade and Nayung burst through the last of the six ranks and into the center,
where Kleptor and the High
Priest stood.
If either of the two men had vanished into the Rulami ranks before Blade
charged in, they would certainly have escaped. But Blade entered the center
before they realized the nearness of their danger, with Nayung hard on his
heels. Both dashed for the far side of the circle, to get behind the two enemy
leaders. The two attackers reached the far side, then turned on Kleptor and
the High Priest.
The two leaders stood for a moment, frozen by surprise. Between them and their
only line of retreat stood Blade and Nayung, even bloodier, even more
terrifying than before. On all other sides the circle was steadily crumpling
under the Zungan attack, and nothing but certain death awaited them. Even as
they stared, three soldiers of the inner rank gave way before a dozen Zungans.
The Zungans poured through the gap and hurled themselves on the handful of
guards and attendants that stood close around the two fat men and their
standards.
Then Blade and Nayung attacked. For the moment they did not worry about
guarding their backs, though an entire division of Rulami soldiers stood
behind them. Their entire world was the two men in magnificent robes, standing
like carved images as the battle swirled around them.
Blade and Nayung thrust together at the first soldier to charge them, smashing
his sword out of his hand.

Brave or mad, he charged Blade barehanded, got under his spear, grappled with

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him. But Blade did not have to drop his spear. Nayung's spear butt flashed in
an arc and smashed the back of the soldier's neck.
Blade shoved the sagging body away from him savagely and moved on. He had to
block a downcut so strong that it took both hands to hold the spear. Then he
slammed the spear shaft forward across the swordsman's throat, splintering the
larynx. He felt a man behind him, aimed a backward thrust by sound alone, and
was rewarded by a thud and a gasp.
But the Rulami were breaking out of their division's ranks and moving up
behind Blade. Nayung did not wait to be asked. He spun about and leaped across
until he was behind Blade, facing the main body of the Rulami, guarding
Blade's back as the Englishman plunged on into the ranks of the bodyguards.
The two men he was after still did not move. Were they paralyzed with fear? Or
did they still hope their guards could beat off both Blade and the Zungans?
Blade didn't know and he didn't care. As he broke through the bodyguards at
last, he saw the High
Priest turn pale. The man turned to flee, then raised his hands to heaven when
he realized there was no place to flee to. But Kleptor was made of braver
material, for all his grossness. He drew a sword five feet long and came at
Blade, swinging it in both hands.
The first swing of that sword smashed into Blade's spear and all but smashed
it out of his hands. Blade wanted to jump back, for here was a weapon against
which he might not be able to defend himself. But there was no room. He and
Kleptor were like the proverbial two scorpions in a bottle. So he moved
forward as fast as he could, driving in under the sword, risking everything on
his speed. If that speed could take him in under the sword before it came
down...
His spear rose high, held crossways in both hands. The sword came down, again
jarring Blade to the marrow of his bones as it struck the spear shaft. But he
held onto the spear, and slammed the tough wood of the shaft down across
Kleptor's forehead. The king wore no helmet. The sledgehammer blow made him
reel. The sword rose again, but it was wavering now. Blade swung up his spear
butt, knocking the sword away, then thrust down. There was a thick layer of
fat over Kleptor's ribs, but the downstabbing spear point got through the fat,
between the ribs, and into the king's heart. The wide-set eyes rolled up in
the fleshy face, the pudgy hands came up and clawed at the beard. The mouth
opened and blood spurted out all over the beard, over Blade. Then the king
fell.
Blade turned to the High Priest, spear flashing up again. The High Priest
still stood. But as Blade's sweat-dimmed eyes focused on the man, he saw that
the High Priest still stood only because he was supported by half a dozen
Zungan spears thrust into his body. A seventh Zungan warrior strode over to
the High Priest's banner and shoved it over. It fell down with a silent-thud,
lost in the roar of the battle all around. Blade did the same with Kleptor's
banner.
Whether that alone was what brought victory, no one could tell later. In the
exact moment that the banners fell, the Great D'bor commanding the Zungan
right ordered his whole division forward at the charge. The commander of the
remaining two thousand shock troops followed. Blade could not see the seven
thousand Zungans hurling themselves at the Kandan army, but he heard it when
they struck. And he saw the results. The entire Kandan army lurched backward,
nearly trampling Blade's force to death by sheer numbers. But the Kandans'
morale had gone, and they were only interested in reaching safety by the
shortest route.
By chance and the skill of the Zungan charge, that route lay through the ranks
of the Rulami. The panic-stricken Kandans smashed into the ranks of their
allies, breaking them apart, dying on Rulami swords, communicating their own
panic to the Rulami. As word of Kleptor's fall spread through the
Rulami, their second division began to waver and leak stragglers. Then it
broke, and before Blade's eyes

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the entire center of the Rulami army dissolved into a mob of scattering
fugitives.
Blade neither joined in the pursuit that Nayung led, nor held his men back
from following Nayung. He watched the warriors he had led to victory go
tearing out across the plain after the fleeing Rulami, and then turned toward
the Zungan center. He had seen and heard nothing of what might be happening
there, since he had led his warriors out for their charge. He badly wanted to
fund out what had happened to
Afuno.
He had to wait a while longer, because the stouthearted soldiers of the Rulami
first division did not break and flee. The Great D'bor of the Zungan left had
to finally lead his division around and encircle the
Rulami. Even then the sound of clashing weapons and dying men rose into the
air for the better part of half an hour. When it faded, another third of the
army of Rulam lay dead. The Zungans took no prisoners.
Blade was finally able to rise and walk toward where he had last seen Afuno.
If he had wanted to, he could have walked every foot of the way without
touching the ground. The bodies lay that densely, both
Rulami and Zungan.
He was approaching a circle of Zungan warriors standing in the middle of a
particularly thick patch of bodies when two things happened. A blinding pain
stabbed through his head, making everything go black in front of him for a
second. The computer had lunged like a spear at him across the dimensions. It
had missed this time, but the next time would come soon. He would be on his
way back to Home Dimension soon. But there was still more that he had to do
here, damn it!
He was still shaking his head, trying to clear the spots from in front of his
eyes, when the Great D'bor who had commanded the center division came up to
him. The Zungan's left arm dangled limply, slashed open for much of its length
and roughly bound up in blood-caked cloth. But his voice was steady and urgent
as he spoke.
"Blade, King Afuno has been wounded."
Blade swallowed. "Badly?"
The Great D'bor nodded. "The Sky Father has laid his hand on him and will take
him soon. He wants to speak with you before then."
Blade nodded and followed the Zungan. The circle of warriors opened to make a
path for them, then closed behind them as Blade knelt beside the king. The Sky
Father's hand was indeed on Afuno. His mahogany face had paled, and the
piercing black eyes had softened. Looking down at him, Blade could see why.
Any one of the gashes that crisscrossed Afuno's belly and thighs would have
been sufficient to kill. That he was still alive now was a miracle. And that
he was able to speak was a still greater one.
But he did speak.
"Blade, will you obey me?"
"You know that I will, Your Majesty."
"Good. Soon-soon you will not have to obey anyone at all-anyone except
Aumara," The king managed a faint smile. "Even kings must bow to their wives
at times. But you-will be king in Zunga." He beckoned the Great D'bor to him.
"Swear by the Sky Father."

"I swear."
"You are-witness. Witness according to the-laws of the Sky Father." Afuno's
voice gained strength, and for the last time it came out as the voice of a
king as he said the ritual words. "I, Afuno, King of Zunga, find Richard Blade
of the English, Great D'bor of Zunga, most worthy as consort and king with
Princess
Aumara. Say you yea or nay?"
"I say yea, oh, King," said the Great D'bor.

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"Good." Afuno's voice faded. "The Sky Father keep you, Blade." The last effort
had exhausted him.
Presently his eyes closed, then his breathing stopped. The Great D'bor knelt
beside him and spread a cloth over his face, then remained kneeling, tears
running openly down his cheeks.
Blade was not far from doing the same himself. But, he knew there remained
still more to do before he could accept calmly the computer's snatching him
home. He turned to a warrior. "Go quickly, and summon the Great D'bor Nayung
and the Princess Aumara. I must speak to them." The tension must have showed
in his voice, because the warrior stared at him.
"Is the hand of the Sky Father on you, King Blade?"
Blade started at being addressed as king. "Not yet, but it may be soon. The
Sky Father deals in strange ways with those of the English. Go quickly!"
"There is no need to summon me," said a familiar voice from behind him, and he
whirled to see Aumara standing there. She held out her hands. "Zunga is ours,
Blade. Or rather, it is yours. You have broken all our enemies and offered
them up to the Sky Father. This is the greatest victory in all the history of
our people. And my father-did he . . ?"
"He lived long enough to see it, Aumara. And he found me most worthy to be
king after him. Will you have me?"
She came into his arms. "When I bear your child within me? How could it be
otherwise, even if I wanted it?" Tears began to trickle down her face, cutting
paths in the dust that caked it. Blade lifted her face to his and kissed her
on the lips. They stood for a time in each other's arms. Then Blade stepped
back to arm's length and spoke quickly.
"Aumara, I must tell you this now. The hand of the Sky Father may be upon me
also. If it is, I want you to choose the Great D'bor Nayung as your next
consort. He is a wise man and a good one. He will do well for Zunga, and
justly for our child."
Aumara nodded, reluctantly. "He is what you say. But the Sky Father will not
lay his hand on you, Blade. Not you and my father both. He has no thought for
Zunga if he does so!"
Blade shook his head-then stiffened as another tentative pain struck through
it. "No, Aumara, I am the
Sky Father's creature. I have come from him, and I must go to him when he
calls. He is calling me now, Aumara." He reached out his hands and took
Aumara's, clutching them hard as another stronger pain hit him.
Then Aumara screamed, and the scream seemed to echo endlessly and terribly in
a great hollow chamber. Blade saw Aumara blur and waver as if he was seeing
her through a sheet of water. Her face was turned toward him. Her staring eyes
were gleaming as they had done that first night on the plain.

They kept on gleaming as the rest of her faded away into a blur, kept on
gleaming as the field and the strewn bodies were swallowed up, kept on
gleaming-gleaming. Then they winked out like fading skyrockets, and darkness
slammed down over Blade.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The cocktail party was beginning to warm up, and Richard Blade was hoping the
girl beside him would do so too before long. It would be a pity if she
didn't-she was a strikingly handsome brunette, with a fashion model's
graceful, economical figure. Unfortunately she was also a rather aggressive
feminist, and little inclined to talk about anything else.
Suddenly the crash of glass broke through the chatter of conversation. Blade
whirled, dropping almost by instinct into a defensive stance, hands raised.
One of the male guests was holding an aluminum clothespole and staring
sheepishly down at the rug. Fragments of glass littered the plush red carpet,
and, looking up, Blade saw the chandelier swaying violently, minus rather more
than half its glass.
The hostess came bustling through the crowd, "Freddy, what on earth are you

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doing?"
"I was just showing these chaps a little quarterstaff work," the man with the
clothespole said plaintively.
The four men around him nodded vigorously.
"Well, you've certainly done a fine job on the chandelier," said the hostess
sarcastically. "Perhaps you'd like to start working on the windows? Or even
better, go outside and do your demonstrations there?"
Freddy nodded sheepishly and led his audience out through the French windows.
Blade stared after him, his mind racing back to the last time he had seen
quarterstaves used. They had been smashing more than chandeliers then. They
had been smashing down Kandan and Rulami soldiers, winning the day for Zunga.
The girl noticed the expression on his face. "What's so interesting about
that, Mr. Blade? I call it a typically adolescent piece of male fooling
around. So eager to show off the skill he thinks he ought to have that he
won't admit the possibility that he doesn't have it."
Blade nodded. "He certainly isn't very good with that pole. But then it's not
right for quarterstaff work in any case. It's much too light and not at all
well balanced."
"Oh?" said the girl. She seemed genuinely interested, and Blade felt a
momentary flicker of hope. "Do you know how to use a quarterstaff."
Again Blade nodded. "It's one of the deadliest weapons ever invented for
hand-to-hand combat if you use it right," he said.
"Have you ever-used it in combat?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact."
Her mouth was now open wide. "Where?"
Blade stiffened. Was the girl probing him for details out of sheer curiosity,
or for other reasons? Such as being a Soviet agent, perhaps? He shook his
head. "It was sort of a private matter. I'd rather not discuss it."
The girl snorted. "Meaning a woman would never understand it. Typical
masculine attitude." She turned

her back on him, and edged away to a safe ten-foot distance. Blade grinned
wryly. She had been genuinely curious-no foreign agent would have picked a
fight with him that way. And there went the evening's chances. Well, a good
night's sleep would not do him any harm. He had brought no wounds back from
Zunga, but it had been a lively time there, and even his magnificent
constitution needed to be restored a bit.
He followed the path of the quarterstaff demonstrators out through the French
windows and onto the lawn, but did not go near them. Even from a distance he
could see they were making asses of themselves.
None of them would have lasted two minutes in combat with a Zungan warrior. He
was almost tempted to go over and show them what he could do, but that would
risk the same sort of awkward questions he had just fended off from the girl.
And the Official Secrets Act was adamant.
But in the privacy of his own mind he could consider the latest adventure and
what he had done in
Zunga. Most of his memories, frankly, revolved around Aumara. For her he had
been no casual affair;
the memory of him would remain with her as long as her memory would stay with
him. No doubt after a time she would take Nayung as her consort, and together
they would rule Zunga, bring up the child, and generally do well by both
themselves and their people. But she would remember him, and so she would keep
alive the story of the English warrior sent by the Sky Father to aid Zunga. He
had done what the
Sky Father had bidden, and then returned to his homeland. In time Blade would
be a legendary figure among the Zungans-and in Rulam and Kanda, a figure
mothers used to frighten naughty children, perhaps?
In any case, Blade knew he had done well. He would indeed be a legend in his
own time-if not in his own dimension.

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